


Happy Accidents

by BetteNoire (WeAreWolves)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Time, Fluff, Foggy Nelson is the real hero, Hurt/Comfort, I have no excuse for this, Identity Porn, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Stranger Sex, bottom!Steve, what am I even doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: Bucky's still in cryo. Steve is in New York, angry and unsettled. And then Trump takes a photo in front of a Captain America mural like Steve has ever supported anything he says or does. So Steve enlists Pepper to throw a costume gala for LGBTQIA causes, and to celebrate his coming out.It's a terrible idea, especially when a bunch of people come dressed as Bucky.But then Steve meets a tall dark stranger...   nb: the Trump content of this fic is essentially zero other than as an inciting incident in the first couple paras.





	1. Happy Accidents

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Счастливые случайности](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13981806) by [Girl_with_Violets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girl_with_Violets/pseuds/Girl_with_Violets), [WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party_2018/pseuds/WTF_Marvel_Trash_Party_2018)



It was the painting incident that finally caused Steve to snap. The future president and his Cheeto-coloured comb-over, posing in front of the Captain America mural at Camp Lehigh. Like they had anything in common. Like Steve in an official or private capacity would ever endorse his hate-mongering.

He is on the phone to Pepper before he'd even fully thought up a plan. “I want to do a big party. Like Tony does. To benefit gay organizations. Lots of publicity. I want to make that idiot wish he'd never tried to associate himself with me.”

“Okay, Steve,” Pepper breathes. “I'd recommend Lambda Legal and Trans Lifeline, but can I ask, why gay organizations? We're doing a big push with the ACLU and the Muslim-American Association and we'd love you to chair--”

“I want to come out during the press run-up to the gala,” Steve says.

There's silence on the end of the line for a whole minute.

“Okay,” Pepper says at last, her voice rising an octave. “Okay.”

“Before you say anything I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm not coming out to spite Trump. That's just an added bonus.”

“Steve,” Pepper says. “Are you sure you're all right? I mean, in the right frame of mind for this? It's going to have repercussions.”

“I don't give a damn about _repercussions_ ,” Steve growls.

“Still haven't answered my first question,” Pepper says, her voice heavy with care.

Steve hangs up.

He hasn't been all right in a very long time. But he's used to it by now.

He smirks to himself. If Bucky were here, he'd--

But he's not here. He's in cryo. He _chose_ cryo. He left.

Bucky always leaves.

 

* * *

 

“We could make it a costume party. Like the Met gala. Costume parties always generate so much more publicity.”

Steve stares out the 67th floor window of Stark Tower. He and Tony have theoretically forgiven each other, but Tony's sulking in Malibu for the foreseeable future. Being in the Tower feels odd. It feels like defeat. Like the past year was nothing but a colossal waste of time and lives.

“...Steve? Costumes?”

“What?” Steve says. “Oh, fine. Sounds good, Pep.”

“I'll just pick a theme then, shall I?” Pepper sighs, closing the case on her StarkPad.

“Heroes,” Steve says, watching a sailboat nose down the East River. “But not superheroes. Everyday heroes, throughout history. People without powers who made a difference. That's what I want to celebrate.”

Pepper smiles, despite her frustration. “That's a lovely idea, Steve.”

 

* * *

 

It turns out, in the end, to be a catastrophically bad idea.

Steve realises this when he walks in to the party (dressed as Alexander Hamilton) and sees no less than six people dressed up as Bucky. One of them's even a girl, her short hair slicked back and parted over her blue coat in a much tidier fashion than Bucky had ever managed, ragged and exhausted, during the war.

There are three other Howling Commando Buckys, one of them a stunningly handsome brunet of about the same height as Buck, and Steve stares at him for a long time until he has to go outside and catch his breath before he puts a fist through a wall. It's the tyrrany of small differences: the man's hair is too light; his shoulders not broad enough. The coat is too new, and too tight. His eyes are blue, but the wrong blue, with none of Bucky's stormy sensitivity. Steve wants it so badly to be Bucky but every time he looks over, all he can see is that the man isn't. The way he moves, his hand gestures: all wrong. Even his damn _teeth_ are wrong.

The gym-toned guy in the dress sergeant's uniform with the cocked hat, with the carefully-manicured Adam Levine five o'clock shadow, Steve just ignores. Hell, he might even _be_ Adam Levine. Steve doesn't care. And the less said about the twink in the comicbook-Bucky red booty shorts and blue tights, the better.

Steve stumbles through his speech and then the music starts. All he wants to do is run away. Pepper sees the line of tension in his jaw and takes his arm, speed-walking him through the crowd, past well-wishers and questioners and guys a little _too_ interested in his announcement that he's bi, to a quiet corner.

He wipes a hand down his face and Pepper smiles encouragingly. “You were charming. It sounded very heartfelt, with those little hesitations.”

One of the blue-coat Buckys catches his eye and winks at him.

This was all a _terrible_ idea.

Steve's insides twist in a knot of anger and _want_ and loss and--

“Did people _really_ think it was a good idea to dress up as your dead best friend? _God_ that's tacky,” slurs a stocky young man wearing a black robe with a lace collar and pearls, his long sandy-brown hair raked back and twisted up into a hard little old-lady bun. “In any case I came over because you look like you needed a drunk,” the man says. Then he catches himself. “I mean drink,” he corrects, pushing a glass of whisky in Steve's general direction. “Although I'm available if you need a drunk, too.”

Pepper giggles. “Steve, meet Foggy Nelson. He's a lawyer.”

Steve tugs down his frock coat and reaches out to shake Foggy's hand.

“Not tonight!” Foggy says, pressing his hand dramatically against his forehead. “Tonight I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bae of the Bench! And I'm here with--” He looks around in confusion, stumbling into a pillar. “I _was_ here with Zorro and Joan of Arc aaand Justice herself.” He brightens. “Oh, there's Justice!” he says, pointing at a redhaired man about 30 feet away. The man is in a toga, blindfolded, with scales and a sword tucked under one arm. “He's blind,” Foggy stage-whispers. “I was trying to get him to dress up as Zatoichi but he's no fun at _all_ sometimes.”

“Hi Foggy's friends. Try to make him drink some water,” Justice says.

Steve throws Justice a small salute.

“Water? Never! Fish fuck in it!” Foggy says, loudly enough that a nearby girl dressed up as Cleopatra spits her drink out in surprise.

Justice smiles and shrugs. “Foggy stands for Foghorn,” he calls over. “Keep it to a dull roar. I could have heard you in Staten Island.”

“But then you'd be in Staten Island!” Foggy throws back.

“With your momma!”

Pepper leans in and whispers in Steve's ear with just enough amused sarcasm for her meaning to be clear, “Justice is Matt Murdock. Who is absolutely not Daredevil.”

A black-gloved hand taps Foggy on the shoulder. As Foggy turns, the hand manages to relieve him of his whisky and replace it with a large tumbler of soda water. Foggy wrinkles his nose at the soda, then indicates the tall man in black who'd handed it to him and says, “He's the fox.”

“Zorro is Spanish for fox,” the man explains, his accent British, his voice low and rough. Steve looks over at him (where had he come from?) and--

\-- _oh_.

He's almost Steve's height and definitely as broad. Tight black suede jodhpurs hugging muscular legs, high shiny black boots. A coiled bullwhip at his hip (Steve can feel a blush rising from his groin in response). Slim black dress shirt half-unbuttoned and stretched over his cut torso. Gloves on both hands. A wide black mask and hat covering the top half of his face. As far as Steve can see, he has short, almost shaved dark hair, and... brown eyes. The curve of his lips is achingly familiar, though, in the way that a half-dozen costume-shop blue coats hadn't been.

But _those_ lips are blue and frozen cold, in a cryo tube in Africa.

Steve takes all this in, as the man leans nonchalantly against a pillar and drinks the whisky he'd liberated from Foggy.

The man watches back. His gaze is direct and challenging, the way you'd look at someone you thought you could take in a fight. _Hangs out with Daredevil_ , Steve thinks. _Looks like he could bench-press a dump truck. Probably a superhero_. He racks his brain to think of any British superheroes and comes up with nothing.

“You're staring,” the man says.

“So are you,” Steve counters.

The man shrugs, nonchalant. “You're hot.”

And the knot of _want_ expands in Steve's stomach until it feels like it's filling up all of him, pushing out the fear and the anger and bone-deep ache of loss. And Steve Rogers begins to think dangerous thoughts. That maybe he's waited long enough. That maybe he could do something for himself.

“Want me to stop?” The man asks.

“No,” Steve breathes.

But then Joan of Arc appears, a pale, giggly beanpole of a girl with hair the colour of cornsilk, and drags Zorro off to dance. He gives a regretful little shrug and vanishes with her into the gyrating mass of bodies on the dance floor.

 

* * *

 

 _Are you enjoying your surprise?_ Nat texts from a Ukranian burner phone while Steve is hiding in the bathroom. 

 _??_ Steve texts back.

Foggy comes in a few minutes later and vomits copiously into a sink.

 

* * *

 

Pepper waves at Steve from the VIP seating area on other side of the dance floor, beckoning for him to come up. Steve sighs at the irony that he's thrown a whole gala to spite an elitist president, and now he's about to go into a cordoned-off area for the elite.

He begins to slip around the edge of the dance floor towards Pepper when there's a momentary gap in the crowd and he sees Zorro again. He's still with the giggly blonde, and Steve feels a strange, possessive jealousy flare up in him.

Steve stands and watches, transfixed by Zorro's dancing. The guy can _move_. He's not being overly showy, or even dirty, but there's something in the way he carries himself... the confidence, the utter control he has over his body... like he knows every inch, every molecule of himself. He moves to the music with a sinuous, rhythmic grace that's doing more to light Steve's libido on fire than anything else since he's woken up in this century.

The blonde looks over towards Steve and her eyes light up. She taps Zorro's arm and then pushes through the crowd. Steve glances around in confusion and relaxes when he sees Matt Murdock a few feet away, one hand trailing along the wall. The girl dashes up to the red-headed lawyer and throws her arms around him, snuggling in close for a kiss.

Steve shouldn't feel as happy about that as he does.

It's nothing to how he feels a moment later, when a low voice murmurs in his ear, “I seem to be without a partner. You dancing?”

Steve turns around and looks Zorro in the eyes. “You asking?” he says, his own voice thick.

Zorro reaches up and places his right hand on the back of Steve's neck. It's an extraordinarily intimate, possessive move for a stranger, yet Steve only wants that hand to pull him in closer, to give him a reason to narrow the space between them.

A leather-gloved thumb traces down the side of Steve's neck and he _shivers_.

Zorro steps forwards, close enough almost to touch, close enough that Steve can feel the warmth of him. He leans in close and whispers, “Or we could do something else. You want to go make an anachronism, Mr Hamilton?”

Steve giggles. He's nervous and scared and contemplating having sex with a stranger, with a man whose name he doesn't know, and he _giggles_.

The hand drags away from his neck and Zorro chuckles, shaking his head. “Okay, that was terrible, I admit.”

He begins to turn away and the moment is going stale and awkward. Steve lurches forwards and puts his hands on the man's hips, ending up with his front pressed along Zorro's back. He hopes the bulge in his trousers pressing against the man's (perfect, muscular) ass will do most of the talking, but just in case that's somehow unclear, he tilts his head under Zorro's hat and whispers, “Yes, it was terrible. Yes, I want to get out of here.”

Zorro grinds back against Steve, and Steve can't help the low moan that slips from his lips as electric currents of desire shoot through him from the friction against his dick.

Then Zorro is framing Steve's face with his gloved hands and looking at him again, looking at him like he's something precious that the man doesn't want to break. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yes,” Steve all but growls. He's not a _child_. He's not breakable. He's not--

Then Zorro's lips are on his and Steve moans again, opening his mouth and Zorro is kissing him, long and deep and dirty. Steve snarls and pulls Zorro's hips flush against his. Steve shivers again when he feels the man's cock pressing against him, hard and thick and big. He feels carefree, crazy with desire, and furious that he's denied himself _this_ for so long. This man, this stranger, feels so _good_ pressed against him, and Steve presses into the kiss with almost a savage hunger.

The man pushes Steve away. His eyes under the mask are near-black with lust. “Somewhere private. Now,” he orders.

Steve gasps, feeling short of breath for the first time since Erskine. “I have an apartment a few floors up,” he says.

“Okay. Lead on,” Zorro says, and slips an arm around Steve's waist. Except that heavy, hard arm around his waist feels amazing, so Steve has to turn in and grab another kiss, and that turns into another, and then there's a strong thigh, corded with muscle, pushing between his legs and rubbing up against him, and Steve bites down on those lips as fireworks go off behind his eyes--

The man slides a hand around the back of Steve's neck again and squeezes, gently. “You have sixty seconds to get me out of here or I'm going to fuck you through the nearest wall,” the man growls, his voice husky with want.

Steve spends approximately ten of those seconds fantasizing about what that would be like, before shaking himself and dragging the man out towards the private elevators. Steve keeps his head down on the way out, until he sees Pepper's strawberry-blonde head in his peripheral vision. She raises an eyebrow but makes no move to intercept.

Steve pulls the man into the private elevator to the residential floors. But he twists with it and Steve suddenly finds himself shoved hard against the back of the elevator, manhandled like he was still a 120-pound runt, not Captain America. And Steve finds that inexplicably thrilling. He pushes back, experimentally, and is met with an equal and immoveable force. His dick gets impossibly harder in his tight breeches and he gasps, “You're--”

But the man silences him with a kiss. “No questions,” he growls into Steve's mouth. “No names.”

Steve answers him with a moan, that turns into a needy whine when the man grabs Steve's thighs and pulls them up so Steve is straddling him, feet off the ground, back pressed against the elevator. He grinds against Steve, biting and sucking down his neck, leaving marks that Steve knows won't last, but wishes would. Steve's hips begin to thrust against the man, chasing _more_. There's so much already, that hard body pressed against him, the hot pleasure-pain of the mouth on his neck, but he wants more. He wants it all.

The elevator doors open and they stumble into Steve's apartment. Steve leans against a wall and wriggles out of the more confining parts of his costume: the frock coat, the hat. He undoes his breeches. The lights are still off but there's more than enough ambient light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows for Steve, with his sensitive vision, to be able to see every detail of what's going on as he leads the way to the bedroom. Zorro tosses his hat onto the sofa, and Steve is a little disappointed to see that the mask covers the top of his head... and is staying on. He undoes his belt, taking the bullwhip off his hip.

Steve can't resist a little smile as he indicates the length of coiled, braided leather. “You know how to use that?” he says.

“Hm?” Zorro says. “Can't say as it's part of my usual kit, but yes, I do.” Then a grin tugs at the side of the man's lips and Steve realises he is so, so screwed.

Because almost faster than Steve can see, let alone react, the man flicks his wrist and Steve's arms are suddenly bound to his chest in wraps of leather. He gasps at the sting, the sheer unexpectedness of it. He could break out of it, sure. But he doesn't want to.

Then the man pulls, almost negligently, the whip in his left hand.

Steve is yanked off his feet and pulled across the floor on his knees. The man steps forwards to meet him and they are inches apart, Steve's face at crotch level, the man's straining erection through his trousers right in front of him. The man looks down and tilts his head, his voice a rough whisper. “Do you require... further demonstration?”

And all Steve can do, all he wants to do, is lean forwards and rub his cheek against those tight suede riding trousers. Against that hard cock burning a hot stripe through them.

“Fuck,” the man moans, pushing into the touch.

Steve bites his own lip, thrilled to have pulled such a needy sound out of the man, and rubs again, and then the man is shoving his hand down and undoing the button fly with practiced movements, reaching down and pulling his cock out, guiding it towards Steve's mouth. Steve has never done this before but he wants to, he wants it so badly.

He wraps his lips around the man's head, already wet with precome, and goes down. The man places that possessive hand on the back of his neck again, and Steve can feel his full-body shiver through it as he sucks him down to the root. He runs his tongue up and down the shaft as he begins to bob his head and he must be doing it right because the man is making the sexiest little moans and grabbing at the short hairs at the back of his neck. Steve can feel that he's holding back, keeping his hips from thrusting in.

The handle of the bullwhip hits the floor as the man's other hand wraps around Steve's shoulder. Steve wriggles free of the whip's coils, a move which causes the man to bite his lip and suppress another needy little noise, and then reaches up with his hands to map the tight muscles of the man's abdomen and thighs.

Steve knows this is a submissive posture, on his knees, some stranger's rather impressive dick in his mouth, but he doesn't feel submissive at all. He feels powerful, taking this muscular stranger to absolute pieces, feeling the man's losing battle against keeping his hips from snapping into Steve's face. Steve finally places his hands on those hips and urges him onwards, urges him to thrust in. It's not like he can break Steve, and honestly, a childhood of respiratory troubles meant Steve's gag reflex is pretty much nonexistent anyway.

“Jesus fuck,” the man whispers, a touch of Irish coming into his voice, as his hips snap forwards and his grip on Steve's shoulder tightens, vise-like. “you're so good, so perfect,” he moans, the rhythm of his hips growing stronger and more irregular. "Do you even know how beautiful you are, like that?" A few more rough snaps of the man's hips, then his entire body tightens and he pulls out of Steve's mouth, coming across his face in hot stripes. Steve moans and dives back down onto his cock, letting the come shoot into his mouth. It feels so good. Everything about this. It should be sordid and weird and wrong but God, why had he waited so long if it was like this? He is so close to coming himself, just from taking this beautful stranger apart.

The man is still shaking, still coming, but finally it tails off and Steve lets his softened but still thick cock fall out of his mouth. He lays his head against the dark hairs of the man's groin, jaw aching, mouth covered in saliva and come. They both stay there for a moment, leaning against each other, the man stroking Steve's hair with one gloved hand, the only sound in the apartment their ragged breathing.

“Christ, that was amazing,” the man says.

Steve smiles into the man's pubes. “My first one,” he says softly.

The man stiffens slightly. _Oh, shit_ , Steve thinks. _Maybe he won't be interested if--_ but then two strong arms are hooked under his, pulling him to his feet.

“You're kidding me,” the man says.

Steve shakes his head. And because it's a stranger, and because it's that sort of night, the confession tumbles out of Steve, the one he'd repressed from himself and his friends for so long. “I... there was someone I loved. Every time I worked up the courage to tell him, he left just before I could. Then when he came back, I'd lost my nerve again. I only ever wanted him, so...”

The man tucks his head into Steve's neck and wraps his arms around him, holding him close. “Jesus,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” Steve whispers back. “Brave enough to jump out of a plane without a parachute, but not brave enough to tell my best friend I loved him.”

“Loved,” the man says, lifting his face away from Steve for a moment. “Past tense?”

Steve smiles and shakes his head. “God, no. I probably always will be in love with him. But he's... he's gone. To where I can't go after him. Someone leaves you enough times, you gotta take the hint after a while.”

“Mm,” the man hums. He holds Steve until Steve finds himself relaxing again, melting into the man's, this stranger's, embrace. They stay for another minute like that, then the man steps back slightly so he can look Steve in the eyes, his hands framing Steve's shoulders. “What do you want to do?” he says quietly.

Steve exhales. “I want to do everything. Everything I've missed.”

“Okay,” the man says, and his voice breaks a little on the word.

Steve leads the way to the bedroom, then hesitates in the doorway. “I know you said no questions, but... I can't break you, can I?”

The man makes a soft snort and shakes his head.

Then his hands are stroking down Steve's sides, undoing buttons, pushing off his shirt. Manipulating Steve down onto the bed, and easing his boots and breeches off, covering each bit of newly-exposed flesh with kisses that range from the butterfly-soft to savage little bites. He looks up from Steve's inner thigh and asks, “you probably don't have any lube, do you?”

Steve shakes his head.

The man grunts and rolls off the bed, feather-light on his feet for his size and bulk. Steve can hear him rustling in the kitchen and then in the bathroom. He prowls back in with a small container in his hand. “Apparently the lube fairies left you some in the bathroom.” That prowling, predatory walk does something to Steve, and he arches off the bed, moaning and palming his erection.

The man growls and lunges onto the bed, fluid and dangerous. Steve gasps, and as he's being flipped over and hauled onto all fours he thinks distantly that the man is still way too dressed. But that's the last rational thought he manages to have as the man spreads his ass and licks a long stripe up from his balls to his tightly-furled hole. Then the hot wetness of his tongue pushes through that rim of muscle and Steve groans, his cock twitching, dripping a steady stream of precome onto the bed.

“I was going to ask you which way you wanted it but I think this answers my question,” the man moans, as Steve presses back needily, keen to find that tongue again. The man reaches a hand around and grabs Steve's cock, stroking him at the same pace as his tongue thrusts into Steve. Steve groans, his ring loosening and fluttering around the man's tongue, his balls tightening.

The man adds a thick finger next to his tongue and crooks it in a certain way and Steve's entire body whites out in bliss. He's coming, thrusting himself back on the man's face, shaking into his release with a surprised cry at the force of it. He's never come this hard, his body so stimulated at so many places at once.

“I hope you don't mind but we're not done yet,” says the man, as he moves to drape his body over Steve, and Steve realises the man is hard again and his cock is lined up where his tongue just was.

“Nnnuh,” Steve cries needily, and pushes backwards, his hole burning as it widens around the man's head. The man peppers Steve's neck with kisses. He wraps a strong arm around Steve's chest and nibbles at his earlobe. Which, Steve finds out, is apparently directly wired to his dick because suddenly he's getting thick and hard again. The man rakes a hand across one of Steve's nipples, twisting it and Steve gasps at the brief pain.

The man drags his chest along Steve's back, tracing his still-gloved hands down Steve's sides until they're hooked over Steve's hips.

“Dammit, take your clothes off,” Steve growls.

“No,” the man says, and thrusts his cock all the way into Steve.

Steve screams out in mixed surprise, pain and pleasure as the man pulls his cock most of the way out again, dragging it over the spot inside Steve that causes the white fireworks to happen. “Oh my god,” Steve mutters, and he never wants this to end. He just wants to be this stranger's fucked-out sex puppet, let the man go to town on his body and wring orgasm after orgasm out of him. And luckily, the man seems more than ready to comply.

“All right?” the man asks.

“God, yes, don't stop,” Steve orders.

“Bossy,” the man says, and Steve can hear the smile in his voice. Then he can't think any more as the man starts pistoning into him. Steve has to brace himself against the headboard with one hand and lean back against the relentless force of the man's thrusts into him. “Want to see if I can make you come without even touching your cock,” the man hisses, breathy and thick. “You feel like heaven around me. So tight and hot, jesus--”

The man slams into him and that's when they break the headboard.

Steve flips him over a few thrusts later, because he wants to see the man's face, wants it faster and harder, wants to _ride_ him.

That's when they break the actual bedframe.

The man barks out a laugh which turns into a choked moan as Steve impales himself back down on the man's dick. The man is supporting his thighs, giving him some extra balance and leverage, and the shift of those muscled arms under him is incredibly erotic. Steve can feel the play of his muscles under his hands, which are wrapped over the man's hard shoulders.

The man's lip twists as his breath starts coming in jagged, uneven pants. He leans his forehead in to Steve's. “Gonna come,” he gasps. He reaches a hand around and grips Steve's cock, expertly twisting up it and thumbing the crown and Steve screams and comes and his hole tightens over the man's cock and then he's coming too. The man stifles his own cry by biting into Steve's neck and the pain pulls what feels like a second-- no, third-- orgasm out of him. His come paints the man's black shirt with white, his body feels like it's shaking to pieces and there's nothing but crashing waves of pleasure, contained by the iron warmth of the stranger's body around him, in him. And if among the uncontrollable cries and moans coming out of his mouth, one sounds a lot like _Bucky_ , well, maybe the stranger won't notice.

Steve wakes up alone in the wreckage of his bed.

Apparently the stranger did notice.

 

* * *

 

Steve spaces out during a briefing a few days later, his mind going to large, calloused hands and lips whose lightest touch sets him on fire. Even the memory of those lips makes him have to shift and rearrange himself under the table.

What is _wrong_ with him? It was supposed to be a one-night stand, just a way to experiment, to get out his anxieties and move on. And it had been _perfect_.

 _So_ perfect.

God, he wanted to find that guy again and bang him through a wall.

“Earth to Rogers?” Clint says.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles. He feels pathetic. Was sex always like this? Or was it just that particular guy? Having sex with another superhero, who could take everything he could give and more. _Or that superhero_ , his dick says. _Maybe just that one_.

Wanda frowns at him from across the table, but says nothing. Steve is grateful that Natasha is still away on her mission because she'd not be so merciful.

Steve pulls out his phone under the table and checks his email, flipping through his messages and closing the app when he sees nothing from T'Challa.

He opens the app that the king gave him, the one that's linked to the camera in Bucky's cryo chamber, and looks at the face of his best friend, frozen in sleep. The app that broke up him and Sharon, not that there ever was much of a him and Sharon beyond a few awkward dates. _You look at that thing more than you look at me_.

God, Bucky was beautiful. Even in sleep. He strokes his thumb across the image of his best friend's face, then closes the app.

He doesn't notice that the timestamp at the bottom is a month out of date.

Next, he pulls up Safari and googles _Matt Murdock lawyer_.

 

* * *

 

Matt gives him a cheery wave when Steve calls out to him from his booth at the quiet Hells Kitchen dive bar where Matt had suggested they meet.

Foggy's cheeks turns a truly impressive shade of scarlet when he lays eyes on Steve. “Um, I would like to unreservedly apologise for everything I said and did last Saturday night,” he says, flopping heavily into the booth across from Steve.

Matt chuckles as he lowers himself down next to Foggy.

“It's fine, Foggy,” Steve smiles. “I was actually in a pretty bad way until you came along. You were right, I really _did_ need a drunk.”

Foggy's cheeks go even more scarlet, and Matt snorts in amusement. “God I am so sorry,” Foggy gasps. “Did I throw up? Oh my god, I _did_ throw up. I'm never drinking again. Please tell me I didn't throw up _on you_.”

“Foggy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is way too classy a dame to vomit on anyone. She puked in the sink like a lady,” Steve says.

Foggy looks like he's ready to spontaneously combust.

They order a round of beers and then Matt folds his hands and turns his face towards Steve. “So, what can we do for you, Steve? No legal troubles, I trust?” The blind lawyer's red glasses reflect Steve's expression back at him, giving him nothing.

“Ah. No,” Steve breathes. He looks down at his hands, and briefly remembers them wrapped around the stranger's cock. A blush hits his cheeks that rivals Foggy's. Thank God Matt is blind, he thinks, though Matt can probably feel the heat rolling off him in waves. “It's about your friend. The, uh, the one that came to the party with you? Dressed as Zorro?”

Matt hums noncommittally while Foggy downs half his beer, seemingly forgetting that he'd just sworn off alcohol.

“I'd like to see him again,” Steve mumbles. “Can you tell him that?”

Matt nods. “I'll see what I can do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter title song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esQ19QRcj-g)


	2. And I Remember Every Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Rogers: the man who will make any mistake once. And then go back and make it again, just to be sure. Because dangerous sex once with a super-human stranger wasn't enough...

Steve wakes up the next morning to confused fragments of an erotic dream, sticky sheets, and a text alert from an unregistered number.

The text message says _Letter for you, Standard Hotel, 8pm._

Steve is restless all day. It's late November in New York, the chill of winter biting down the long canyons of Manhattan already lined with Christmas lights, the city full of tourists as it gears up for sales and Thanksgiving parades. But even the tourists aren't dawdling on the sidewalks looking up in this weather. Everyone is hurrying, get inside, get warm, and Steve has nothing to do until long after dark.

He almost wishes for the call to assemble, but the bad guys must be taking Thanksgiving off, too.

There's a mountain of paperwork he could do. Pepper has set up with interviews with friendly news sources, and he has about 10 emails full of questions to answer. But one of the questions always is, _Are you seeing anyone?_ What does he answer? No. He answers no. He's not seeing anyone.

He goes to the gym in the Tower and destroys some punching bags. Runs until the nerves bleed away into something resembling exhaustion. Has a shower and then a mini fashion crisis. What do you wear to fuck a guy whose name you don't know, in an undisclosed location?

...if indeed the letter isn't just a Dear John.

In the end he just throws on his favourite t-shirt, a warm jacket, and his second-best jeans. If it goes well, the clothes will be on the floor soon enough. And if the letter is just a Dear John, then at least he won't feel like an idiot who got all dolled up for nothing.

The staff at the Standard either don't recognise him or are too cool to acknowledge it. With a “Rogers, Rogers, let me see,” in a pleasant West Indian accent, the handsome young concierge flips through papers at his desk, then-- “Aha. Yes. Here you go.” He hands over an envelope.

There is no letter inside of it at all.

Just a key and, tied to it by a piece of string, a paper tag with an address. The handwriting – boxy, capital letters – is not one Steve has ever seen before, but it still feels oddly familiar.

He tips the concierge and heads back into the night, to walk uptown.

The address is a Hell's Kitchen warehouse. As he fumbles in the cold to figure out which lock the key fits, he can smell the stables a few blocks over, where the carriage horses are kept. Hay and leather and manure. There is enough light leaking from the street that he can make his way up the five flights of stairs to the top floor without needing to find the switch. The building is cold, empty; his feet echo on the old wooden steps.

At the top is a heavy steel sliding door, open a few inches.

Steve puts his shoulder into it and pushes it the rest of the way open, the door giving up the fight with a screech of dry metal.

In front of him is a loft space, lit by glass skylights, that stretches across the entire building. It's warm, heated somehow, for which Steve is immensely grateful as he slides the door shut behind him. He's not sure how it's heated as there seems to be no electricity, the only light coming from the skylights and about 100 church candles flickering around the room on various low Chinese-style tables. The only other piece of furniture is a simple bed against one wall, nothing more than a couple of mattresses on a platform. (Less to break, Steve thinks.) Steve wonders if the place belongs to Matt Murdock, as a blind hero would have no need for light in his... practice area? Steve narrows his eyes at what could be a pile of wooden staffs in a corner, near a dark mass of what could be mats.

It's beautiful, whoever it belongs to, whatever purpose it usually has. The warm flicker of candlelight glinting off broad, waxed-hardwood floors; a long wall of old-style windows, made up of small, square panes of glass. The exposed I-beams and brickwork, dancing with shadows in the warm half-light.

“Are you here?” Steve breathes, as he takes off his coat and throws it onto the bed. He figures in the affirmative, because candles don't light themselves, but he can't see anyone. He pulls off his t-shirt and throws it on the bed, too.

He nearly jumps out of his skin a moment later when two large, strong hands cover his eyes and a voice whispers from behind him, “Yes.”

Steve has to bite his lip to try to slow his racing heart. He's not sure if it's from surprise or nerves or attraction or a combination of all three. Then the man steps closer, pressing his chest into Steve's back, and the needle lands pretty hard on attraction.

“Close your eyes,” the man says.

Steve can feel a length of fabric being placed over his face – a blindfold. It's soft; surprisingly comfortable. As it is knotted into place, that low, husky British-accented whisper comes again: “If we're going to do this, there have to be some rules. First is you wear a blindfold.”

“Why?” Steve says, a hint of belligerence creeping into his voice. He wants to see the man, to see his lips, the cleft in his chin that's so like Bucky's. He knows this whole... affair? is a terrible, self destructive coping mechanism, but all he's ever had to give is himself, his own body, and he's learned that it's frustratingly hard to destroy.

“Because this is the only way it can be,” the man answers, his voice low and intimate in Steve's ear.

“Why is this the only way it can be?” Steve asks, as the man traces his hands down Steve's neck, along his shoulders, and down his upper arms. He manages to keep the shiver of arousal out of his voice, but barely.

“Questions are a burden to others. Answers are a prison for the self,” the man responds, taking Steve's wrists and moving them gently behind Steve's back.

Steve yanks his arms free.

And then it hits him. Natasha. Natasha's _surprise_. Natasha who has been trying to fix him up ever since he came out of the ice. She's convinced some spy friend of hers to play fantasy lover to him, and the spy like all spies wants to maintain his secrecy.

“What did she bribe you with?” Steve snarls. Because as much as he wants this, and oh god he wants this, a night where he can lose himself, get fucked out of his own head, forget everything except pleasure – he will not be anyone's charity case. Not even Natasha's.

“What did who bribe me?” the man asks, and he's moving, just out of Steve's reach, his feet silent on the wood floor, trackable only by his voice.

“Natasha. The Black Widow. To be here. To do...,” Steve sighs, “this.”

The man snorts in amusement. “I've met the Black Widow, although we haven't been formally introduced. I'm not sure she likes me very much. She is not why I'm here.”

There is a pause, and Steve strains his enhanced senses to hear where the man has gone. He's... disturbingly good. Steve can't hear anything over the noise of 10th Avenue traffic, the hiss and clank of radiators and the flicker and spit of melting wax.

Then he is at Steve's back again, hands cupping Steve's ass possessively. Steve presses back into the touch, despite himself.

“Why would you think I would need to be _paid_ to come here? What has been _done_ to you, that you can't see yourself any more?” The man hooks his thumbs into Steve's jeans and one hand traces around the waistband, until he can pop the button and ease the jeans down over Steve's hips. There's a hum of approval when he finds no underwear below the jeans. “I wanted you from the moment I first saw you.” Lips brush softly over the side of Steve's neck and he moans as strong hands hook around his hipbones and pull his ass back to grind on a very hard cock. Those lips pull gently at the edge of Steve's ear. “I was surprised you wanted me. I thought...” He chuckles. “Never mind what I thought. What do _you_ want, Steve? Within certain rules, I will do anything.”

“What are the rules?” Steve asks. He's so hard he's light-headed. It's not helping that the man is tracing his right hand down Steve's chest, down to the dark blond curls, and over and around his cock and balls, never touching them, but so close.

“One. You wear a blindfold. Two. You don't use your hands.” And the man takes Steve's wrists again, manipulating them into [a simple box hold](https://strathclydeopenropeexchange.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/foundation-of-the-box-tie/). Steve can feel a soft cotton rope being knotted around his forearms, immobilising them behind his back. “I know you can break out of this rope. I'm trusting you not to.”

Steve nods. Then the ridiculousness of the situation hits him. Captain America bound and blindfolded, having stranger sex with someone who, given all available evidence, probably isn't one of the good guys and certainly isn't registered. “I don't know what I'm doing,” Steve whispers to himself.

“If it's any consolation,” the man says, tying one last knot, “I don't know what I'm doing either. But hey. Youtube tutorials and repurposing of existing skill sets for the win.” He traces a finger down Steve's cheek. “If you're ever uncomfortable, or want to stop, just tell me.”

“I want to touch you, though. If I can't touch you, how will you... what are you getting out of this?”

More velvet kisses, down the nape of Steve's neck. “Don't worry about me. I like taking care of people. And you look like an angel when you come, so I just want to make that happen as many times as possible tonight.” The last words are spoken at the same time a finger slips between Steve's ass cheeks, slowly stroking down to his hole.

Steve shudders, and he could feel his blush moving down his face and across his chest.

“Shall we begin?” the man whispered.

Steve nods. “But I still feel that--”

“Ssh,” the man says. “Let go. I have you. Let it all go.”

And with that, he sweeps down and picks Steve up like a bride, like a sick child, and lays him gently on the bed. The gesture is so intimate and powerful and familiar, Steve felt tears begin to prick at the corners of his eyes. He missed this. He missed it so much, being held, being taken care of... not having to be the strong one.

The man slides in behind him, wrapping his long legs around Steve's. Large, strong hands begin to massage the muscles of Steve's neck and shoulders. Steve groans and arches as a muscle that's been tense since approximately 1943 finally gives in and relaxes after being pressed relentlessly by a calloused thumb. The hands wander up along his neck, up into his hair, rubbing the tension out of his scalp, and then back down along his spine, finding spots of tension with uncanny accuracy and forcing them to loosen out.

Steve feels blissed out, his eyelids heavy. His erection has flagged, and as the man works out a knot in his shoulder, he mumbles, “thought you said something about orgasms.”

Steve could feel the low chuckle as the man presses his chest up against him, that wall of muscle, nipples hard against him. “Getting there,” he murmurs.

“Get there faster,” Steve says, shoving backwards.

“As you wish.” Then strong arms are around his waist, flipping him over, hauling his ass into the air. “You're still able to form words. Gonna have to do something about that.”

Steve has a brief moment to understand he's about to get eaten out, and an even briefer moment to think it can't be as good as he remembered, and then his cheeks are being spread open and the man's thick, hot tongue is pushing inside him and it's even better than he remembered and _holy shit_ and he pushes back onto the man's face and a sound that's half-moan, half-scream tears itself out of him.

“Oh, we're just getting started,” the man murmurs from behind him.

“Didn't your mother teach you never to talk with your mouth full?” Steve growls, achingly hard again and missing the hot pressure of the man's tongue inside him.

The man bites him on the ass. Hard. “You leave my mother out of this, Rogers.”

Then something is slipping into Steve's hole, not a tongue, not a finger... it's hard, and a little cold, covered as it is with lube. There's a burn as his hole stretches around it and Steve gasps. The gasp turns into a surprised moan when the thing starts _vibrating_.

“Hmm,” the man says, and moves the plug slightly.

Steve's body tightens like a bowstring as the vibrations land on his prostate. “F-fuh...” is all he can manage to say.

“Bullseye,” whispers the man.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says, as burst after burst of pleasure blasts through his body.

Then the man is leaning over Steve and all Steve can think is _what is he going to do now_ and _please let it involve his cock_ and he's reaching over Steve to grab pillows and pile them up. Steve growls at him and gets a series of kisses along the jaw in return, the man's cock solid, hot and heavy on the cleft of his ass as he reaches over him, and Steve growls again and pushes up towards his cock.

“Not enough?” the man says, and there's a small _click_ and the intensity of the vibration from the plug increases.

“Oh, god, fuck you, I can't--” Steve says, words bitten off by the electric explosions inside him.

The man moves him around to be on his back, half-supported by the pillows into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, and spreads his legs. The plug is pressing even more firmly into him now. He can't help pressing into it further, twitching his hips to get some friction, some semblance of movement. His cock is dripping a steady stream of precome, hot and wet, down its shaft. And then the man's weight is gone from the bed.

“You're so beautiful,” he says, from between Steve's spread legs.

“Nguh,” Steve groans, dismissing the compliment immediately. Mr Fantasy Fuck wouldn't be quite so breathless over him a few years ago, before Erskine. “Fucking touch me.”

There's a snort, and then the vibrations kick up even further. Steve arches and screams, so close to coming.

And the man is on him, arm wrapped around Steve's lower back, holding that arch, mouth biting and suckling at a nipple. His stubble rakes across Steve's pecs, already sensitive from the compression and displacement caused by the rope binding, and Steve's body jerks in ecstasy. As he switches his attention to the other nipple, Steve thinks of Bucky and when he started coming home from the docks with five o'clock shadow at the end of shift, his pale eyes tired but his body so cut from the work that Steve could see every shift of muscle when he'd pull his dirty shirt off and fling it towards the hamper. And he imagines Bucky striding over him, kissing his pigeon chest, worrying his nipples pink, like he'd always dreamed--

and the vibrations kick up a notch again--

And Steve screams and comes, swallowing _oh Buck_ as his body shakes and his cock spurts hot again and again as the pressure on his prostate won't stop and he realises the vibrations are gone but the man has a thumb under Steve's balls, on his prostate, pressing the orgasm on further and further, and Christ, he's coming _again_ \--

Steve whimpers, and finally stills. The man pulls him into his arms, a hand sliding back to ease the plug out of him, and holds him, just _holds_ him, as Steve curls up and comes down from the immense high he'd reached. The man presses a kiss to his temple and Steve feels like a whole person for the first time in so long, relaxed and safe in that embrace.

And Steve realises they haven't kissed tonight. He raises his head, seeking out the man's lips. “Kiss me,” he moans.

He's half-afraid of refusal (was kissing on the lips now against the rules?) but then the man's lips are on his, a gentle and chaste exploration. Steve pushes in, wanting more, whining and grunting his need. The man opens his mouth and Steve pushes his tongue in, and it's like heaven. It's like coming home. So easy, and so good. Maybe it was the freedom of the blindfold, that he didn't have any visual cues to make him worry he wasn't doing it right. Maybe it was that his partner was making his own needy little moans into Steve's mouth. But he could kiss this man all day.

The man's hands rove all around back, petting and stroking him. Unobtrusively checking Steve's bindings, humming a little question as he strokes Steve's forearms. “'S fine,” Steve mumbles into his mouth. “I like them.”

One hand then moves up to grab Steve's hair, the other dips down to stroke his ass. Steve can feel how hard the man still is, his hot, leaking cock pressed against Steve's thigh.

“We've been ignoring something,” the man rumbles, and Steve thinks _finally_. But he isn't talking about himself at all, Steve realises, as the man begins kissing down his neck and biting at his collarbones, on his way downwards towards Steve's dick. already thickening again. With his hands still bound behind his back, Steve has no way to reciprocate, to show the man how he feels, other than to rub his cheek against the man's short hair like a cat. The bristles of the man's almost military-short haircut prickle his cheek, and the man mumbles and hums endearments into Steve's chest as he bites and kisses his way down to his stomach. He slides down on his knees onto the floor, his broad shoulders wedging themselves between Steve's legs.

Steve bites his lip and throws his head back as he feels hot breath on the head of his cock, which is back to being dizzyingly hard. The man's teasing him, Steve knows it, and when the first lick comes up the slit of his dick, a smile spreads across his face. It's answered by a low, wicked laugh from the man between his legs. Another lick sends pleasure curling all the way down to Steve's toes, and the man must notice because he feels lips brush the tops of his toes, where he's curling them against the wood floor. Steve feels like he's being worshipped, being enveloped with love.

It's not what he expected, from an affair with a stranger.

“Are you trying to ruin me for sex with other people?” Steve murmurs, as the man begins kissing his way up Steve's inner thigh.

“Mm, you've discovered my fiendish plan, Captain America,” the man drawls in a thick radio-play villain voice. “But can you stop me in time?”

“Of course,” Steve breathes. “But not yet.”

“Good. Because we still need to decide whether I fuck you first, or you fuck me.”

Steve sucks in a breath. He hadn't even considered that but now all he could picture was all that muscle and power wrapped around him, around his dick. “You'll have to untie my arms,” Steve says, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Or I could wrap my legs around you and ride you,” the man whispers, the air from the words brushing the head of Steve's cock like they had physical form.

Steve bites his lip so hard he feels the salt of blood against his tongue and curls in on himself because he's halfway to coming just thinking about it. And that's when the man goes straight down on Steve's cock, all the way, sliding the head of it into his throat, his lips sinking into Steve's pubes. The hot, wet pressure around his dick, the tongue somehow curling along his length as the man begins to bob his head... it's absolute heaven. Steve can barely think as that wicked mouth slides almost all the way off him, the tongue running wet and messy up his length, under the head, and into the slit. And then the tight wet heat envelops him again, sinking all the way down, and Steve has to exert all his self control to keep from snapping his hips up into that mouth, shoving his cock further down that velvet throat.

The man hums as he feels the stifled movement. “Do it,” he mouths around Steve's cock.

“I want to see you. Anything. Anything you ask, just let me take this blindfold off for one moment,” Steve moans. He can feel his balls tightening. He's so close. And the idea of _those lips_ wrapped around his cock...

The man slides off Steve's cock, with a slurp. “No,” he says, kissing the head.

Then the bastard goes down on him again, sucking him hard and fast, taking him all the way in and urging Steve's hips to come up to meet him. Steve falls back against the pillows and fucks up into the man's mouth, his mouth running nonsense and endearments as the heat in him crests again, ready to break, and just as he moans a warning, the man pulls off. Steve can _feel_ the man's smug smile around his dick.

He circles the base of Steve's cock with his fingers, pressing hard, and waits for Steve's breathing to calm down, for his hips to stop twitching.

“...you're evil,” Steve groans. He'd been taken right to the edge of coming, and then stopped, perfectly, expertly.

The bed dips again under the man's weight. “I did warn you.”

Then Steve can feel the heat of his body right in front of him, and his legs are bracketed by strong thighs. One hand reaches around and grabs the back of his neck and Steve melts into the touch, that possessive, claiming touch. That hand fists into the short hairs at the base of his scalp and pulls his head back, and the man's lips are on his again. They're chest to chest, the man pushing into him, kissing him deep and dirty, both of them gasping with the intensity of it.

And then the man's other hand is around Steve's still rock-hard cock, guiding it under him, lining him up. Steve breaks the kiss. “Don't I need to open you up? Like you did with me?” he asks.

“Mm-mm,” the man hums, nudging back into the kiss.

“Wait, won't that hurt?” Steve says, a little scandalised, feeling the imbalance between them. Feeling how much is being given to him, and how little being taken back.

“Not for long,” the man says, and Steve can hear the wickedness in his voice as he adds, “I'm going to go real slow anyhow.” And he does, sinking down inch by inch onto Steve's cock. If Steve thought his mouth was heaven, it's nothing compared to his ass. Unbelievably hot and tight. Steve is gasping, shuddering, with each inch he penetrates into the man, his body framed by the man's powerful legs, a hand at his neck and another squeezing his shoulder in a vise-grip. After what seems like forever, he bottoms out, and the man brushes a kiss that's mostly smile across his face, and Steve finds himself smiling too, smiling at this crazy night with this wicked, bad-news devil who had decided to take his virginity and then come back for more. Because apparently he thought Steve hadn't been thoroughly fucked enough, and he needed to personally rectify that.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs. “I meant it. I want to see you, in... in real life. I don't care who you are, what you've done. I just...”

But the man only presses a kiss to his lips in answer, a kiss where the smile has gone. “Ssh. Be here now. Forget tomorrow.”

Steve can feel the press of muscles around his legs, and the man rises up until Steve almost comes out of him, and then sinks down again, so slowly. “There is no tomorrow,” the man whispers. His arms move down to embrace Steve, and he lays his chin on Steve's shoulder, his head against Steve's. It's as if they're hugging as they fuck, as if they're making love, him and this stranger in Hell's Kitchen, the pleasure slow and cumulative sparks that... Steve wouldn't be surprised if he took the blindfold off and found himself to be glowing, for light to be pouring out of his skin, as he floats on this amazing feeling of being inside the most beautiful man he's ever seen who's not Bucky.

But the man's right. There is no tomorrow, because someday Bucky will be healed, and Steve will go to Wakanda and say what he should have said before Bucky went into cryo, but had been too dazed, too afraid to say in front of the man that knew every damn thing in the world about him except one. Except the most important one.

Steve leans forwards slightly, easing the man back, and is rewarded by a shudder and a gasp as the next long, slow stroke brushes over his prostate. They're still holding each other like shipwreck victims, hovering on the edge of orgasms, making love impossibly slowly to keep from tipping over and coming and ending the moment... and Steve realises the man's cheeks are wet.

“Is everything okay?” Steve whispers.

“Yeah. Fine. Sorry,” the man says. “Been a strange week.”

Steve snickers. “Yeah.” Then he pushes towards the man's mouth again, kissing him slowly. “You're amazing, you know. Whoever you are. You're gorgeous, and a romantic, and an unbelievable lover. Whoever you _can_ be with, they're going to be a very lucky guy.”

The man snuffles slightly. “You're not helping,” he says, his voice both joking and sad at the same time.

And before Steve can really parse all the strange half-turns their conversation has taken, the man thrusts down on Steve hard, both of them crying out with the pleasure of it. He raises the pace into something hard, almost angry, lip curled in a snarl as he claims Steve's mouth with his own to forestall any more awkward conversation. Steve wants to think more about this but... his brain just fuzzes out, there's nothing but the darkness and the sound of flesh on flesh and hot, fevered kisses and the rising wave of ecstasy that he's drowning in as he starts fucking up into the man, pistoning into him as in turn the man crashes down on him, both of them seeking a penance in each other, a forgiveness and release.

Steve bites down on the man's neck, hard, figuring _maybe if I mark him I'll know him later_ and then there's a hand on his throat like iron, stopping his breathing to make him let go and that's what finally pushes him over the edge, spilling himself into the hot tightness of the man's channel, gasping and shuddering, as he comes so hard he blacks out.

He doesn't know how much time passes before he awakens.

His body comes to life in pieces, tingly and abstract and utterly relaxed.

The ropes around his arms have been untied, and the candles are blown out.

He is alone.

Again.

Apparently the great ones always leave. 

 

* * *

 

In Ace in the Hole, the last real dive bar on 9th Avenue, there is a back room. It has about six old, sticky wooden tables, and a most unusual clientele.

The bar's stern-faced Irish owner opens the rear door and ushers in the newcomer. He taps the man – Italian, by complexion; a vet, by self-possession – on the shoulder with his shillelagh and gives him a stern look with watery blue eyes shot red by a more than passing familiarity with Bushmill's finest. The owner then touches the sign above the back entrance. It reads _What happens in the back room stays in the back room._ Underneath, someone had scrawled, _or so help you 'Devil._ The newcomer nods his head in agreement.

The newcomer sets his beer down on the one occupied table in the room, where a card game is in progress. An empty chair screeches on the floor as he turns it around. He sits down backwards, resting his chin on the back of the chair.

Matt Murdock elbows the dealer. “This is Frank. Deal him in.”

The man nods, and deals Frank Castle his first card. A metal hand glints under the cuff of an old leather jacket as he flicks the card face-down across the table.

Frank stares at the dealer's metal fingers a moment too long and looks up to find eyes as pale and cold as death watching him, assessing if there's going to be a problem.

He raises his hands, _no threat_ , and smiles awkwardly. “Sorry. You who I think you are?”

The man snorts. “I'm pretty much not who anyone thinks I am.” He sighs wearily and flicks Frank his second card. “But the short answer is yes.”

Frank grunts and picks up his cards, dropping his eyes to them. “Think you got assigned to my unit on a black-bag op in Afghanistan in 1995. Got real upset because I was the usual sniper but then you made a shot from two miles out and I kinda couldn't be mad after that.”

The dealer's look goes faraway for a moment, then he's back, a wry half-smile pulling at his lips. “I remember that op. I think. Your guys used to listen to loud rock and roll in the jeeps. They didn't allow me music so it was...” he shakes his head, smiling more fully now. “...an unimaginable luxury. To listen to fucking _Free Bird_ with a bunch of twitchy, sand-mad recondos.”

“I wanted to find you, talk to you afterwards because that was some shooting, but--”

“--Poof,” the dealer says, gesturing with his flesh hand to express smoke dissipating. He flicks Frank his last card. “I never get to stay for the party.”

Frank looks around at Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson, and back to the dealer. “How do you assholes know each other?”

The dealer chuckles and points to Foggy.

“Oh my god,” says the young lawyer, already a little past drunk, his tie loosened and what looked like marinara sauce on his shirt. Or maybe blood. You could never tell with this crowd. “You know how the apartment next to mine was empty for a long time? Well then this crazy guy moves in.”

A snort and an eyeroll from the dealer.

Foggy wrinkles his nose at him and continues. “I tell Matt, I think a crazy guy has moved in next to me. He's huge and his eyes are all helter skelter and he eats _all this fruit_ and he always wears a hat and gloves. Matt's like, whatever--”

“--I had other things going on at that precise moment, Foggy, to be fair, and you are _somewhat_ paranoid--”

“And then one night at 3am these yakuza jerks break into my apartment because they've been trying to get to Matt, and they decide that the way to do it is via me. So I'm sitting there in my Spongebob pyjamas pissing myself while a Japanese gangster and his friends are cocking a very big shiny pistol to blow off my head, when 250 pounds of cyborg Howling Commando comes crashing through the wall like the fucking Kool-Aid Man and I swear to God the chunks of plaster from the broken wall and the dead bodies of the Japanese gangsters hit the floor _at the same time_.” Foggy's face was sincere in its amazement.

And the dealer blushes and ducks his head. It's way too adorable for someone that deadly. “I kinda have a problem with appropriate use of force. I get... confused.” He looks over at Castle, _you understand_ , and says more quietly, “but then if you don't want excessive force, don't cock a gun five feet from my head while I'm asleep.”

Castle grunts and nods, and he's about to say something when a flapping hand cuts him off.

“Force, schmorce. That wasn't the bit that will be seared in my mind's eye forever,” Foggy says, holding up a finger. “And I _need_ to share this so you understand my pain.”

The dealer groans.

Foggy points to him, eyes narrow. “I am eternally scarred by the fact that the Winter Soldier sleeps _stark bollocks naked_ and I'm a military history nerd so there I am convinced one minute I'm going to be executed in a gangland killing, and the next minute I've got Bucky Barnes' dick about eight inches from my face.”

“Okay, Foggy, you can stop now,” says the dealer.

“And let me tell you--”

“ _Foggy_ \--”

“The cybernetic arm is _not_ the most terrifying part of his anatomy--”

The dealer picks up Frank's beer and pours it over Foggy's head. The rest of Foggy's diatribe is thankfully lost in outraged splutters about “wasting beer” and there being “children in China with no beer”.

The dealer gets up, graceful and silent, and struts towards the bar like he's going to destroy it. He calls back over his shoulder, “Drinks are on me the rest of the night, as long as nobody mentions my dick again.”

“Ha!” cries Foggy, raising his fists. “Victory is mine!”

“We do need to talk about what you're doing, Bucky,” says Matt, his face serious.

Bucky Barnes taps the bar with a metal finger. “Just adding to my list of terrible life choices, Murdock. I know I'm being an idiot but...” He smiles back at Matt, a little smile, guarded and sad. “Everything in my life isn't on fire right now. For the first time that I can remember. I know it'll all explode again, but... just let me have right now.”

“There's knowing it'll explode again, and there's lighting the fuse yourself.”

Barnes shrugs, and turns his back to them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [chapter title song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSeGC4DoIkk)
> 
> Once again I have no excuse for this. Have some trash.
> 
> Also: Foggy Nelson remains the real hero. 
> 
> FOGGY: *wails* I used to have a Trapper Keeper with your faaaaace on it
> 
> BUCKY: yeah that's because my junk wouldn't fit--
> 
> FOGGY: SHUT UP SHUT UP AAAAA LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU
> 
> If you like this I have a couple other Stucky fandom works, [Lucky Seven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7033105) (mechanic!bucky / Cap!Steve AU); [The Murder Ballads](http://archiveofourown.org/series/413774) (unrepentant BAMF!Bucky) and [the Spotless](http://archiveofourown.org/series/467503) (post CACW). 
> 
> I also have a trashy novel you can read for free on Wattpad called [Heartbreak Incorporated](https://www.wattpad.com/story/81593275-heartbreak-incorporated).


	3. Never Get Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad missions and good advice.
> 
> _tw: brief use of homophobic slur by a secondary character_

Steve aches for days afterwards. Not the ache of a healing wound, or overstressed muscles, but an ache of _absence_. Like something vitally important is missing, and his body is hyped up, on edge, waiting for it to come back at any moment.

Waiting for _his_ touch.

Steve doesn't tell anyone. Pepper is away with Tony on the West Coast; Sam is in D.C. And Steve is old-fashioned enough that this is the sort of thing he'd want to talk about face to face. He wishes most of all that Natasha was back, but she's still on her op. She must know something's wrong, though, as Clint phones him up three days after the night in Hell's Kitchen.

“Yo, Steve, want to come over for pizza?” Then Clint's voice drops to a whisper. “Kate's here and she's saying I don't have any friends.”

Steve smiles. “Yeah. Actually, was feeling kind of lonely myself.”

“Great!” Clint crows. “Oh, yeah, can you also _get_ the pizza?”

“Clint, this is why you have no friends.”

Clint pouts on the other end of the line. “I know. Um, Kate wants a white pizza. Extra spinach.”

Steve hops a cab to Bed-Stuy and grabs three pizzas and a case of beer from the place around the corner from Clint's, then heads up to his apartment. Clint meets him at the door in his typical ratty jeans and old purple t-shirt, his lab mix Lucky immediately entangling himself excitedly around both of their legs. “You are truly an American hero,” Clint says when he sees the case of Brooklyn Lager under Steve's arm.

Kate Bishop flicks her dark hair, held away from her face by gold mirrored sunglasses, and waggles her fingers at Steve. She is perched cross-legged on the kitchen countertop, as if touching Clint's floor was an unimaginable horror. To be fair, Clint's floor hadn't been mopped since Bush was in the White House, so Kate has a point. And Kate is wearing fancy, tight white jeans and a lavender leather jacket, either of which Steve knew probably cost more than his motorcycle.

“So howya been?” Clint says, flicking the cap off a beer and placing the pizza boxes up where Lucky couldn't get them.

Steve smiles wanly and eases himself down on Clint's battered leather sofa.

“That good, huh?” Clint says around the neck of his beer.

“I don't suppose you have any wine in this dump,” Kate says. “I have the feeling I'm going to need it.”

“No. It's fine. I just...” Steve sighs, accepting the open beer Clint passes him. “I had a one-night stand and--”

“--caught feelings,” Kate finishes.

“Yeah,” Steve says, rubbing at wrinkles in the beer's label with his thumb. “And now I don't know what to do. Because I'm not sure, uh...” Steve presses his lips together, afraid to tell his friends about his inexperience.

Kate sighs and pulls $20 out of her pocket. “Clint. Bodega. Pinot grigio. Now.”

There's a brief staring contest, but finally Clint groans, takes the money, snags two pieces of pizza, and pads downstairs, Lucky following behind.

Kate smiles at Steve. “Last time I sent him out for wine he inadvertently started a gang war. But tonight I'm feeling lucky.”

Steve grins back and shakes his head.

Kate scooches a little closer to the edge of the counter and uncrosses her legs, letting them dangle. She taps her manicured fingers on the scuffed linoleum impatiently. “So. You met someone, had a presumably amazing night with them, caught feelings hard, and aren't sure if it's because that was probably your first one-night stand ever or because the... gal? Guy?”

“Guy,” Steve mumbles.

“--guy was all that.”

Steve blinks at her. “How do you know all this?”

Kate rolls her eyes. “Please. I'm literally Clint's only friend. I speak fluent emotionally constipated boy.”

Steve hunches his shoulders, shrinking in on himself, wishing he could be tiny and invisible again. “He's the first person I ever had sex with,” he says, quietly.

“Oh, _shiiiit_ ,” Kate hisses.

“And it was technically a two-night stand.”

“Okay,” Kate says. “That's--”

“And I think he might be a supervillain.”

“Wow,” Kate breathes. “You-- are _all_ the Avengers like this? Because I thought it was just Clint. Are you _all_ giant trash fires?”

Steve shrugs.

“I thought I was qualified to deal with this,” Kate frowns. “I am _not_ qualified to deal with this.” She bites her lip. “Uh, was the sex good?”

“Mindblowing.”

Kate blushes and twists her finger around her hair. “Not gonna lie, the only time I boned a super, it was A+, would bone again.”

“Do you think that's it?” Steve says. “I'm second-guessing myself all the time, wondering if what I'm feeling is just because I was able to relax for once. Because I couldn't hurt him.” Steve fidgets, and has to force his brain to stop going in the direction it's heading because that way lies involuntary erections. “He was as strong as me.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Kate says.

Clint returns at that moment, inexplicably with a bloody nose, and passes Kate a bottle of wine. “ _Ew_. This is _chardonnay_ ,” Kate grimaces.

Clint flips her off, grabs another beer, and takes a box of pizza with him to the couch. He flops down next to Steve and puts the pizza box between them. He fishes out a slice and pauses before cramming it into his mouth. “So are we done talking about emotions yet?”

“No,” says Kate.

“Yes,” says Steve.

“Okay,” says Kate, untwisting the screw-off cap of the Chardonnay. She glances briefly at Clint's collection of grimy glassware before slugging straight from the bottle, “Gut instinct time. You know there are superhero bars, right? How do you feel about a one-night stand with someone else superpowered?”

Something curls, dark and sour, in Steve's stomach. It must show on his face because Kate smirks and says, “Guess that's a no. What about another one-night stand with your boy?”

Steve can feel the blush flashing up his body. He exhales, long and ragged. “That's the problem. I want him in the days, too. I want to know him. Take him out.”

“Dude,” Clint says, “who on Earth wouldn't want that with you?”

“I think he's a spy. Or worse.” Steve stares at his pizza. “He won't reveal his identity. Makes me wear a blindfold.”

“Okay, one, _kinky_ , and two, seriously,” Clint says, reaching for his phone, “Asshole won't reveal his identity? We have a Nat for that.”

Steve grabs Clint's arm before he can snag the phone, which causes Clint's pizza slice to slide off his lap and into Lucky's waiting mouth. “Aw, Lucky, no,” Clint moans. “He's going to fart all goddamn night. Sausage plays hell with his intestines.”

“I want to keep Nat out of this for now,” Steve says. “He'd go to ground. He'd go to ground hard and I'd never see him again, if I did something like that. Everything's very... delicate, between us.”

“Would you know him if you saw him?” Kate asks. “Because maybe you should try the superhero bars. Maybe you'd run into him.”

Steve suddenly feels breathless, and nods.

“Besides, everyone in the bar will hit on you, and that might make your boy think twice about playing hard to get.”

Clint nudges his arm. “You should start at Flanagan's. Ease your way into the experience.”

“Ew, no,” Kate frowns. “You go to Flanagans to get in bar fights and die of alcohol. Legit, the only thing you'll pick up at Flanagan's is a case of super-herpes. Or Wade Wilson. Which is sorta the same thing.”

Clint grins. “I got into a drinking contest with Wade once. It wasn't one of my better ideas.”

Kate does her exasperated little eyeroll again. “No shit, Sherlock. You got in a drinking contest with a man who can _regrow his own liver_. Only you, Clint. Only you.” She drinks another gulp of her wine and continues. “No. What Steve wants is a club called 616 down in the Meatpacking district. Two doors down from Soho House. You can borrow my membership card.”

 

* * *

Steve goes home and puts on some of the tight dark jeans Pepper had bought him and a blue button-down, and heads to the club. It's a warren of dim, crystal lighting, mirrored walls and velvet, impossible to get a clear sight line from any point in the series of rooms. His lover could be here – could be mere _feet_ away – and Steve would never be able to see him in the maze of curtained-off banquettes, each raised between one and six steps off the floor. The closest to an open space is a long, neon-underlit bar in the next room over from the tiny dance floor, its quilted velvet walls soaking up the throbbing noise of the bass-heavy dance music.

So Steve does the only thing he can do. He sits down onto an open stool and orders a drink.

He feels like a fool.

Over the course of the next hour, he watches at least four couples pretty much have sex on the dancefloor, and a slim, dark-haired French-Canadian attempts to pick him up with a frankly hilarious story about how he accidentally came out during a fight in the frozen food section of a supermarket. The man, Jean-Pierre, is handsome, almost elfinly delicate, and has a razor-sharp wit that Steve finds enjoyable. But...

But.

That's it.

When Jean-Pierre puts a hand on Steve's thigh and suggests they dance, Steve moves it gently away and apologises.

“Ah, you are waiting for someone else,” Jean-Pierre smiles.

Steve nods, a blush burning at his cheeks.

“ _Tant pis_ ,” Jean-Pierre says, shrugging. “At least I have made a new friend.” Then his eyes twinkle again. “You are very intelligent _and_ very handsome. He must be special, to have captured your attention so.”

Steve somehow manages to blush more, and Jean-Pierre's grin widens.

Steve groans. “You did that deliberately.”

Jean-Pierre winks as he slides off his bar stool. “If I can't learn how far down that blush goes, at least I can see how deep it becomes. Perhaps _je vous rencontrerais_ on the dance floor?”

Steve laughs, shakes his head and orders another whisky. The encounter leaves him feeling good enough that when the curvaceous woman with the white-blonde hair slinks in next to him, he's feeling positively chatty.

 

* * *

 

The elegant retired spy brushes her long, white-streaked hair behind her ear as she rises to greet the ghost that has come to visit. He pulls the curtain of their banquette closed. It's the nicest, most private one in the club, well insulated from the music and the prying eyes of the crowd, but close to all three direct exits from 616.

The ghost places a metal hand gently on the spy's shoulder as he kisses her cheek.

“Both, please. I'm Italian, we're a civilised people,” she admonishes.

A low chuckle escapes the ghost's lips and he dutifully brushes her other cheek with them too. “Valentina,” he says, placing a large, drawstring fabric bag on the table in front of her. “For you. For your _time_.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him as she opens the bag. Her eyes widen as she pulls out a navy-blue alligator Hermes Kelly bag. “James. This is too much,” she protests, but not very strongly.

“I know you're not technically active any more, but...” the ghost begins.

Countess Valentina de la Fontaine cuts him off with a wave of her manicured hand. “No spy ever truly retires, of course.”

“Exactly,” he says. He touches one of the brass feet of the bag. “There's a ceramic knife hidden in the base, here. Garotte cord in the strap. Lock is a small explosive; press it three times to arm. And the whole thing is kevlar lined. It won't stop everything, but neither will a vest.”

“I'm charmed,” Valentina smiles. “This is the nicest thing anyone's done for me in a long time. I rather feel I should go back into the Game again, with this.”

The ghost tilts his head slightly in acknowledgement.

“And of course we also part even, without you owing me anything. Owing spies, even retired ones, a favour can be _ever_ so awkward. Clever boy. _Someone_ taught you well.”

The ghost inclines into a slight bow, then sighs. “They put things in my head... I don't even know why I do them, or how I learned them.” Two hands, flesh and metal, spread in a gesture of defeat. “I know how to slip into this building; through this crowd, without anyone noticing me. I know the transactional protocols of meeting someone such as yourself. And I knew where to get that bag modified. Yet...”

“Yet not how you acquired any of this information.”

A sigh, a reach for the bottle of grappa sitting in the middle of the table. “No. Not sure I want to.” The flesh hand's shake is barely noticeable as he pours out a hefty measure of the clear spirit into a glass. “I get mixed up, though. Everything is a mission. The first actions that come to mind in any situation, they're... usually not appropriate for civilian life.”

Valentina puts one of her long, elegant hands on his flesh one, and squeezes gently. Her skin is smooth and dry, and smells faintly of lime and bergamot. “I hate to tell you, darling, we're _all_ like that. You spend long enough in the wilderness of mirrors, you start seeing reflections everywhere.”

“So what do you do?”

Valentina smiles ruefully as she pats his hand. “Never quite retire.”

The ghost snorts. “That, I know. They'll never stop hunting me, anyway.”

“Your fault for being the best. Such a _male_ foible. Never be the best at anything, at least not openly.” Valentina hums over her smaller glass of grappa. “You know, when Peggy Carter retired, the other women at SHIELD looked down on me for being Nick's sidekick? For accepting second billing rather than pushing for his spot? I was _a traitor to feminism_ , they said.” She raised her glass in a small salute. “Yet [I'm still here](https://open.spotify.com/track/4qiwWYpuxTvTtAGOANMbYW). And where is Nick?”

“But how do you function? I've barely been back in the US two weeks and I've already fucked up some things so badly, just... getting confused and kinda going to Defcon Five when I didn't need to. And I...” he rubs his short hair, the hair he shaved off after the ice of cryo left it a matted mess of split ends. “It wouldn't be a problem but...”

“But you _are_ the best, so when you slip into your... _professional_ mode...”

“...complications ensue,” he finishes, slugging back the last of the grappa. “Haven't killed anyone yet, though, except some yakuza fucks who had it coming--” then he blushes, and nearly coughs on his drink. “Sorry, ma'am, didn't mean to--”

“Ugh. _Please_. I was Nick Fury's lover for a decade. That man had a mouth dirtier than the underside of a truck-stop toilet. I don't give a shitting, cunting fuck what sort of language you use.” Her lips quirk into a smile at James' amused shake of the head. “James. Here is the whole secret of coping, when you are as we are: _forgive yourself_. That is all. Each day from now on, you are allowed to start again, afresh.” She traces her nail against her glass, a distant, soft smile in her eyes. “We've been taught a ruthless sort of perfection, every word, every action, every motion honed to an exact efficiency. Real life isn't like the Game. It's messy. You can't care about people, and be perfect at the same time. Choose caring. And forgive yourself for when it makes you imperfect. It's our scars that make us beautiful; it's the broken statues that are most loved.”

The ghost kisses her hand. “Glad you never worked for Hydra. You'd be running the world right now.”

“I know,” the spy smiles.

 

* * *

 

The platinum blonde, Felicia, is... pushy. She has a body like a pin-up girl, all hairpin curves and swelling breasts, encased in a zip-up shiny black top that manages to be both tighter and thinner than Steve is comfortable with. Steve can tell, for example, that she's not wearing a bra. And not that he was _intending_ to look, but her anatomy is so impressive his eyes just get... sucked in, and he's unable to tear himself away. _And lo, did the Pilgrim walk towards the Valley of the Shadow of Death..._

After a couple of drinks the platinum blonde all but hauls him to the dancefloor and starts rubbing herself all over him like a cat. The song is called “Can't Keep My Hands To Myself” and, dear reader, she certainly doesn't. Steve tries to excuse himself without being rude, but his evasions slip off her like water off PVC. Finally he just growls, “bathroom,” and stalks off, and _thank God_ he's finally rid of her--

\--until she sashays in to the men's room behind him. “Thought you'd never ask,” she says, zipping the PVC top down all the way.

That's when Steve Rogers hits the point of 100% Done With This Shit.

“No,” he says. “Look, Felicia, you seem like a nice girl--”

“--I'm really not,” she purrs--

“--but for heaven's sake _put it away,_ I am _not_ interested. I am in love with someone else, and I came here to look for him, and just... please have some dignity and stop this right now.”

Felicia's face turns ugly. “Oh god, _of course_ you're a fag,” she snarls, stuffing herself inelegantly back into her top. She turns, muttering to herself, “can't believe I wasted half my night with you when I could have gone for that hottie with the crew cut instead. He had better shoulders than you anyway.”

Steve's heart leaps into his throat as the door slams behind her.

He's about to run after Felicia when his phone beeps. It's the call to assemble.

 

* * *

  
Someone's hijacked a shipment of vibranium bound for several East-Coast research hospitals, where it would be made into new, experimental joint implants. It's not a lot of the exotic, energy-soaking metal, but King T'Challa thinks it's enough to be used for some very bad purposes. He's on his way from Wakanda, too, but the ship disappeared off Long Island Sound so the Avengers will get there hours before he does.

Coulson briefs them on the way: a new supervillain with a crack mercenary team, unknown but very sophisticated MO. Possible British origin. Steve feels a clench of fear in his gut, hoping whoever they find on the ship isn't... isn't _him_. Natasha is still in Eastern Europe, so it's him, Clint, Tony, and Wanda. Bruce was judged a little too much of a liability on a container ship.

Except, it isn't a container ship.

Apparently a fortune in vibranium can fit in three suitcases. And three suitcases fit nicely into a yacht, now steaming full-speed for Bermuda.

As they subdue the last of the yacht's mercenaries, a little too easily for Steve's liking, he opens one of the suitcases to check the vibranium.

That's when everything goes pear-shaped.

He has a moment to recognise, rather than the dirty-grey geometric hunks of raw vibranium he was expecting, the colourful wiring of a very powerful bomb. As it flashes down to zero, he shouts a warning and ducks behind his shield. The explosion shreds the ship, the concussion wave scrambling Steve's thoughts and his hearing as it blasts him through the hull.

As he hits the cold waters of the Atlantic, all he can think as he blacks out is that he hopes his team are all right.

A scarlet bolt of energy weaves through dark waters, looking for him, embracing him, and Wanda lifts him to safety.

He regains consciousness on and off during the flight back, mostly to the sounds of Clint reaming Coulson a new one for bad intel. The team is safe; his injuries are the worst by far. The vibranium is in the wind.

The team cut his uniform off him and roll their eyes at the mess underneath. They try to send him to hospital or, failing that, the medical level at Stark Tower. That suggestion goes over as well as it always does. Instead Steve mutters about enhanced healing and, as dawn breaks over Manhattan, staggers in his underwear through the tower towards his apartment. To his _bed_.

Which is still broken from his night of amazing sex with his mystery lover a week earlier. Steve had told Tony he didn't want Friday monitoring his apartment, that he wanted to take care of everything himself, and he finds himself somewhat surprised that Tony has actually honoured his wishes.

And then he feels the tears start to course down his cheeks.

Steve collapses into the broken mess of the bed, the sheets still smelling of sex and _his_ scent, juniper and peaty Irish whisky and something slightly metallic.... the broken bed frame causes the mattress to dish in the middle, and it's like a nest, it should be warm and comforting but there's something, someone _missing_ , and all the aches and shrapnel cuts and fractures in his body suddenly don't hurt as much as the unfolding _want_ within him.

He scrabbles for his phone and looks up the burner number the man had texted him on. It's probably long dead, knowing spies, but Steve tries it anyway. _Need you. Please,_ is all he says.

His phone bleeps a few minutes later. _?_ Is the only message.

Steve types back. _Mission gone wrong. I'm a mess. I'm sorry. Please, I just need you to hold me._

Another pause, which feels like eternity. Then: _I can do that. Loc?_

Steve's blood fizzes with adrenaline. He responds: _My apartment in the tower. I'll tell Friday you're coming?_

_No need. Blindfold yourself. And stay away from the bedroom window. ETA 20min._

Steve rolls off the bed (the frame cracking unhappily and collapsing still further) and roots around in his dresser until he finds a white silk pilot's scarf that Sam had given him a couple Christmases ago, along with a nice leather flying jacket. He puts on some music, a nice calming classical playlist Pepper had suggested to him, and then sits on the sofa. Inwardly, he apologises to Sam for the use to which he's about to put the scarf (though he knows Sam's reaction would probably be a grin and a fistbump and a “get some!”). He ties the soft ivory fabric around his eyes.

Even the strains of a [Michael Nyman soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/album/1xbql7auxb9hh3RESAvY2G) does nothing to calm Steve's rising anticipation. He sits as still as possible, his mind going to Bucky's stillness, the unnatural, perfect stillness of the Winter Soldier, and he _listens_. Steve doesn't realise how hard prolonged stillness is until he tries it. He was never still, as a kid. He could try, but if his mind didn't get bored, his body would betray him: a cough or twitch or spasm. Bucky was never still either, not before the war. He always had a song in his head and often enough on his lips, body moving to it, swinging, strutting. Zola made him still. The war made him still. The Winter Soldier had started to grow his icy roots in him even then, six hours in a sniper's nest without moving, then _bang bang bang_ , targets destroyed, jeez, Barnes, didn't even know those rifles could shoot that far.

And Steve was going to tell him, he was. When he'd come to Europe with the USO he was going to find Bucky and show off his new body and finally Bucky might look at him _like that_ , like more than a pal, but by the time he found Bucky the only way he looked at _anyone_ was with a terrifying, intense blankness, and Steve lost his nerve.

Steve hears a faint humming sound, and a _pop,_ and then the air pressure changes in the apartment. Hell, the air molecules themselves seem to change, and though Steve is sitting with his back to the bedroom door he can _feel_ the man's presence in the apartment. Steve's breath comes short and shallow as footsteps, barely audible even with supersoldier hearing, approach him from behind.

A warm hand traces down over his hair, and the blindfold. “Good boy,” the man rumbles in his ear, the British accent noticeable in the subtle shifts of emphasis in the words. Steve presses back into the touch, and apologies tumble from his mouth. Apologising for his weakness, his need. For being so goddamn _lonely_ all of a sudden.

The man fists his fingers into Steve's hair, bending his head back further, and presses his lips down on Steve's in a hungry kiss, stealing Steve's breath away. “If you don't stop apologising for acting like a _fucking human being_ , I'll--” the man growls. Then he pauses and a low, rough chuckle escapes his mouth and into Steve's. “--I can't think of anything to threaten you with, that you wouldn't enjoy.”

Steve smiles, then whines, wanting those lips back. Wanting to reach out and _touch_. He can smell clean cotton and the sour tang of old leather. But the man detaches himself and paces around Steve, deliberately scuffing his feet so Steve hears him. “Jesus, what happened to you? Did everyone get hurt this bad?”

“No, just me, thank God,” Steve says.

The man makes a scoffing sound. “That's not something to be thankful for.” There's more pacing then, and it almost seems... angry? “I thought... I thought you had people looking after you. People who _took care_ of you,” he says. The emphasis on “took care” is vicious, his opinion of Steve's team clear.

“They have their own lives,” Steve protests. “They help. They do so much--”

“Not enough,” the man says, and he is furious, Steve can feel it. It's _possessive_ , the verbal equivalent of the way the man cups the back of Steve's neck in his left hand. It awakens something long-dormant in Steve, a feeling of coming home. He hadn't had anyone be like that towards him since Bucky before the war, and then the war came and Bucky couldn't even take care of himself, Bucky wild and unmoored and retreating further and further behind the grey walls of his eyes but still dropping any enemy soldier that came within 50 yards of Steve, still never missing a watch, still the best sergeant on the western front. Even if, as Steve finally realised, he'd been holding on by just the tips of his fingers for a long, long time before he even got anywhere near that train.

Steve hears the water in the bath being turned on, and the aroma of bath salts wafts in on the steam from the bathroom. The man comes back and Steve can hear the rasp of cloth – silk or satin – between his hands. “What are you doing?” Steve asks.

“Taking care of you,” comes the answer, the “ _obviously_ ”, there but unspoken. “Grab your elbows.”  
Steve obeys.

“You _are_ in bad shape. You didn't even complain,” the man murmurs, edging Steve's knees apart. Steve's bare thighs brush against iron leg muscles cased in tight yet flexible leather, then ruck against a soft t-shirt as the man kneels. “I have to tie your arms again. For what it's worth, I'm sorry it has to be like this. You're too injured to use rope, but...” a note of mischief creeps into the man's voice, and Steve feels another silk scarf slip down his chest, tickling over his nipples.

He sucks in a breath.

“A shame you can't see these. They're the same shade of blue as your eyes,” the man purrs, as he winds the silk over and around Steve's forearms and hands, locking them in place around each other but leaving Steve's upper arms and shoulders free. “You'll have more movement like this. I can trust you to behave?”

Steve nods. “But why _does_ it have to be like this?”

The man huffs, and Steve jolts in surprise as he is picked up, bridal-style, and tipped against a broad, cut chest clothed only in a snug t-shirt. His face tucks into the crook of the man's neck, and Steve closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the warmth, the smell....

“It has to be like this because...” the man sighs. “Because I made a mistake. Not... not with you,” he clarifies, feeling the ripple of tension that goes through Steve. “You have _never_ been a mistake. But much like you,” he says, tracing a finger down a burn on Steve's leg, “I'm trying to back out of a situation before it explodes on me. And, as it's been pointed out, I was the asshole who lit the fuse.” The cheek pressed against Steve's forehead pushes into a grin, and strong fingers hook into the waistband of his underwear. “You're not going to need these. May I?”

Steve sucks in a breath as he nods.

The man rips his underwear off him with one quick yank. The tearing of the fabric almost hides the sound of Steve's moan. He's half-erect already, just from proximity, just from a kiss, and that action sends him hurtling to rock-hard. He's embarrassed how much his lover's ability to make him feel small again, small and precious, turns him on.

That moan deepens when the man gently lowers him into an almost-scalding bath. Steve relaxes into the water, feels the ash and salt and dried blood of the mission begin to lift off him. He groans. It's _heaven_. He never thinks to take baths by himself; never has time for that sort of self-indulgence. A quick shower after exercising is more efficient.

Except he's not by himself. His lover reaches in and gently lifts out one of his legs, and begins to wash it with a soft sponge and some nice-smelling soap. As those strong hands – hands he's quite sure are both capable of and experienced in acts of violence – delicately clean his wounds, he realises why he is okay with his lover's level of possessiveness when he normally hates it, _hates_ being dominated as much as he hates bullies. It's so simple. It's not domination as he'd always thought of it. It's not _you are mine and you will do as I command_ ; it's _you are mine and I will treat you like the most precious, important thing in the universe_.

His lover gently manipulates Steve, turning him and moving him in the bath so every inch of him can be cleaned. The head and neckrub that comes with his hair being shampooed is so good he feels like he's going to black out wth pleasure. Not a sexual sort of pleasure (although there's plenty of that building up inside him as well), just... Warmth. Intimacy. Comfort.

“I'm yours,” Steve moans, head lolled back against the rolled edge of the bath. “You know that, don't you? I want to be yours.”

Steve thinks he hears a needy little whine come out of the man's mouth, and then his temple is pressed to Steve's, and a heavy, muscled arm circles Steve's chest. The man exhales, ragged and low, and his arm tightens around Steve's. There's no other answer, and Steve's heart plunges.

It falls even further as the man reaches in and pulls up the plug on the bath. The water drains, the sound ugly and guttural.

Steve struggles against the silk binding his arms. He wants to reach out, catch the man's sleeve. “I'm sorry. I keep--”

“Stop apologising,” the man hisses. Then his tone changes; softens. “You liked having your head rubbed so much I thought I might do the rest of you. I saw massage oil in the bathroom cabinet.” As he helps Steve out of the bath, their bodies pressed together, his face against Steve's, his tone changes again.

“I'll--”

It's a single syllable, raw with emotion, choked back before it gets anywhere.

“What?” Steve whispers. “You'll what?” Steve's stomach twists, wishing, wondering if it had been _I'll--_ or _I lo--._ Stopped at just the right time, they sound interchangeable.

They stand there for a moment, Steve pink and steaming from the bath, pressed wet against the beefy, rock-hard form of his lover. The man's breaths come ragged, and his voice drops. “Don't doubt me,” he says. “But also, don't push me. I'm... I'm trying, Steve.”

“Okay.”

The man nods against him. “Okay,” he breathes.

He wraps Steve in towels and guides him out to the sitting room, where he throws the couch cushions on the ground and arranges Steve on them, head resting on his still-bound forearms.

Then his hands go to work. The oil is warm, and smells faintly of eucalyptus. It soaks into his muscles, loosening them further, as the man's fingers work their way across his back, down his thighs, and up his shoulders. After the first couple minutes Steve is boneless, happily drooling into a sofa cushion. Nobody has ever taken care of him like this. Not even Bucky. He begins to feel a pang of guilt, that he's literally not done a single thing for this man who does nothing but _give_ to him, when a surprisingly hard finger flicks the back of his head.

“Stop thinking. I can _hear_ you thinking.”

“Just... you really know your way around a body...” Steve mumbles. “Wanna know what school they teach that at.”

The man snorts. “No, you really don't,” he says, then he does something with his thumb and Steve's shoulder blade that makes his brain go sideways for a little while.

When Steve can form words again, he mumbles, “wanna do something for you. Never do _anything_ for you.”

“Baby, you _are_ doing something for me,” the man says, his voice managing to be wry and husky at the same time and at least one muscle in Steve's body starts getting stiff again. The man runs fingers down Steve's left side. “Having you all spread out and relaxed under me is,” and there's a sharp intake of breath, “it's _very much_ doing something for me.”

Steve slowly rolls his hips. He's been half-hard all night, ever since his lover walked in the damn room, but now he's almost painfully erect against the scratchy sofa cushion underneath him. “Show me. Let me feel what it's doing to you,” Steve says, pushing his ass in the air a little (and rubbing his cock along the sofa cushion as he does).

“Mm,” the man moans, and there's the sound of a fly being unbuttoned, and _yes_ , Steve feels the hot, hard length of the man's impressive erection sliding along his crack.

“Jesus,” Steve groans, and pushes back against that hard cock.

A hand grabs his hip and there's an honest-to-God _snarl_ of need from behind him. The sound makes Steve shiver with desire and push back all the harder. Then the fingers of the man's other hand are pressing against his hole, the oil burning pleasantly where it touches more sensitive skin.

“You either need to tell me to stop _right now_ or accept that I am going to give you the fuck of your life and you'll be walking like John Wayne for a week,” he growls.

Steve snorts and shoves himself back on the man's fingers, burying himself up to the second joint, and _oh God yes_ and says, “Enhanced healing. Probably only be a day.”

“ _Don't_... I am _perilously_ close to losing control. That... is not a thing to be encouraged,” the man says breathlessly, through gritted teeth as he begins finger-fucking Steve. His arm lets go of its bruising hold on Steve's hip to instead circle around Steve's waist, pulling their bodies together.

Steve arches back against him, throwing his head back as those two thick fingers rub over his prostate. “I want to see it,” he moans. “I want to mess you up, make you lose yourself. Stop holding back. Let go. You made me let go. Now you need to take your own advice.” Steve can feel the pause behind him, the uncertainty. “I can take it,” he snarls.

The man gives a shuddering gasp, his chest hard against Steve's back, and then lifts himself off Steve, pulls his fingers out.

He's gone. They're not touching, anywhere. It's wrong. Everything is _wrong_.

 _Now I've really fucked this up_ , Steve thinks, but then there's a sound from behind him, this raw, primal _roar_ , and Steve can't even begin to catalogue it, to categorise it. It's like nothing he's ever heard before--

Except he _has_ , it was on the heli--

But then hands are on him, impossibly strong hands, flipping him over, picking him up and all but throwing him on his back onto the kitchen island. There's a crash as everything else that was on the kitchen island gets swept onto the ground.

Steve's legs are shoved apart and he's pulled closer to the edge of the counter. He tries to sit up but suddenly his lover's powerful, v-shaped body is there, pinning him, thick arms bracketing his head. The man's cock pressing at his entrance.

And waiting.

Waiting for Steve to say it's okay.

Steve throws his ankle over the man's shoulder and arches. _Yes_ , he moans.

Another snarl and the man seats himself inside Steve in one long, hard thrust. Steve wants to cry. He's _huge_ , and it's _so good_. He feels so full, the drag over his prostate unbelievably intense from the size of him. He barely has time to adjust before his lover pulls out and slams into him again, and a litany of moans and little noises and words of encouragement fall from Steve's lips, _yes, so good, fuck me, harder, mine,_ praising his lover, telling him he loves his actions, his body, his cock... because he's Steve Rogers, and he's never been good at saying _I love you._

The man wraps an arm around Steve's shoulders and grabs the edge of the kitchen counter for leverage and pounds into Steve like his life depended on it. Steve is pushing down onto him, urging him on, urging him _harder_ , both of them half-crazed with lust and the high their hyper-sensitive bodies are giving them. It's somehow even hotter that his lover hasn't even bothered to take his clothes off, the leather jeans are still hanging down low on his hips, the t-shirt pushed up his chest.

He's dimly aware that his lover has to keep shifting his grip as pieces of the granite countertop break off in his hand. But he doesn't give a damn. Because between the bath and the massages and the sex he has never felt this good in his entire life and the orgasm that is building inside him, the intense rush of emotional connection he's feeling, it's _everything_. He's going to come without his own cock even being touched, he knows it. It's rubbing up against the cut planes of his lover's abs, so smeared in pre-come they're already perfectly lubricated, every drag over those hard ridges as amazing as the drag of his lover thrusting inside him.

Steve wraps his other leg around the man's waist, needing to be closer, to feel more. His lover's mouth bites down on his neck, along his collarbone, up his jawline, raw and animal, before meeting his lips in a crushing, bruising kiss.

It's matched by his lover's most powerful thrust yet, and Steve gets an idea just how much the man's been holding back. The glimpse at the brutal potential in the man shouldn't be as erotic as it is, but Steve feels his entire body shaking in response, tipping over the edge--

\--the kitchen island collapses.

With a grunt and a shift of huge muscles Steve can feel under the man's skin, his lover manages to keep them from falling into the broken mess of wood and granite. Steve tightens his legs around the man's waist and they both come back from the edge of their orgasms, giggling like naughty schoolboys. Their cocks rub against each other and Steve more than ever wants to free his hands, wants to wrap a fist around both of them. But this is not the time to try breaking the rules. Maybe later. _Definitely_ later.

“What now?” the man snorts. “Shall we destroy the sofa?”

“Mm-mm” Steve hums, kissing up the side of the man's neck. “When we first met, you said something about fucking me through a wall.”

“Bedroom wall. At least then we'll end up on the bed.”

“What's left of it,” Steve smirks.

“I'd apologise for the property damage,” the man says, carrying Steve effortlessly through the living room, “but a) I have a long history of property damage and b) no more apologies tonight.”

“also c) you're not even remotely sorry,” Steve says, and then he feels his back pressing against the cool drywall of the hallway. He bites his lip and writhes his hips in anticipation, rubbing himself against his lover, rubbing their cocks together.

The man's right hand drifts down and circles both of them, not stroking, just holding, as his lips meet Steve's. The kiss is softer than Steve expects for the sharp edge of lust they're both riding, and Steve melts into it, melts against his lover, letting him take his full weight pressed between that incredible body and the wall. His bound arms are pressed between their chests, and Steve manipulates them until he can catch one of the man's nipples between his fingers. The man moans into Steve's mouth and Steve whispers back, “I want you. Always. Stay with me.”

The man shakes his head, a tiny motion of refusal, but it's like his heart isn't in it. Steve pushes his advantage. “Come on. Whatever you did... We can fix it. You and me against the world, I wouldn't bet on the world's chances.”

“No,” the man breathes, and Steve's heart feels like it plummets 40 floors. There's something in his tone of voice... something final.

Then it gets so much worse, as one hand comes up to frame Steve's cheek, a silent apology. “This... this is the last time. After this, forget me. I don't exist, Steve. I never did.”

Steve is about to protest, is preparing to rip the silk binding his arms and take off his blindfold, because _NO_ , but then a fist rams into the wall next to his ear, grabbing one of the support beams hidden behind the plaster. The man shoves him hard against the wall, all brute force, and bites Steve's neck. Steve jerks and arches despite himself, despite the fact that they need to stop, they need to settle this. He starts to fight back, twisting his body, but then as the man's other hand grabs his ass he realises he's only making it _easier_ for him--

\--then they're fucking again, and it's gone beyond lust and tenderness into something almost like hate, desperate and hard and final. His back is already cracking the drywall, his lover's body bowed against him, braced between the support beam and a solid stance on the floor, as he pistons into him.

All thoughts of stopping fall out of Steve's brain, because it feels so good (and he hates himself a little for that) and because he is needy and selfish and if this is going to be the last time he's going to take every second of it, make it last as long as he can. The stretch of his lover pushing into him, the constant, heavy pressure against his prostate, the friction of his cock against both of their stomachs, even the way he can feel the wall behind him powdering and then collapsing, it's _overwhelming_. He dimly realises someone is screaming and he realises it's him, his body betraying him for the first time since Erskine, surrendering to the jolts of erotic bliss thundering through him with every one of his lover's thrusts.

He feels the man thrust into him harder still, his rhythm going sloppy, his own need whining through clenched teeth. A hand reaches around his cock, pumping him rough and hard, sending Steve right to the edge of his own orgasm. Then teeth rake down his neck and Steve is falling, coming apart, his body shaking as he comes all over both of their stomachs. As his body tightens over his lover, he comes too. The feeling of the man coming inside Steve sends him into what feels like a second orgasm, or maybe a re-heightening of his first. He can barely think, his brain is so whited out from bliss. All he knows is this feeling of completeness, of pleasure, that's spreading out from him like a supernova. He breaks the silk cords that bind his forearms, and embraces his lover. Spans the wide, hard chest; wraps his arms around that strong back; holds him as they both shudder against each other, saying volumes in gasps and stuttered moans.

He gradually comes down from the high, the bright, euphoric sparks of physical pleasure darkening and dropping away. They're slumped against each other, leaning against the remains of the wall, like a couple of punch-drunk fighters. The weight of the last 24 hours, the leaden curtain of exhaustion, begins to settle on Steve. He's been operating on a sort of nervous energy for days now, if not weeks, and the orgasm has burned it all out of him. He wants to fight on, but his eyelids are so heavy under the silk of the blindfold. His body is spent, and soft with relaxation.

His lover picks him up again and carries him through the bedroom door to the wrecked bed, laying him down and arranging blankets over him. Steve is dimly aware that the temperature is lower than it should be; outside air is coming in through the window... which isn't the sort of window that opens. He paws at his lover's arm, trying to get him to come to bed. All he wants to do is drop off with the man curled possessively at his back, a heavy arm over him. Steve can picture it in his head; hell, his body can _feel_ it.

But the man gently disengages, before brushing his lips to Steve's temple, and whispering, “goodbye.”

Then he's gone.

Steve jolts upright and rips off the blindfold.

There's a hole in the window.

Steve stands at it, dizzy and unsteady on his feet as a newborn colt, and looks down. Through the late-morning sun the only thing he can see is a cornflower-blue silk scarf, drifting in the breeze down to the street, 50 floors below.

 

* * *

King T'Challa is at the briefing the next day. Coulson is fiddly and apologetic, while Natasha calls in with intel on a potential buyer of the missing vibranium in the UK.

The team is exceptionally solicitous of Steve's wounds, and Coulson cringes even further when he sees the stiffness in Steve's gait, his hesitancy sitting down. If Steve were in any mood to laugh, he would.

He does laugh, joylessly, when Pepper storms in to ask why Steve hasn't reported the broken window in his apartment, which is a major security breach. He just shrugs. Wanda shoots him the sort of look that would terrify most normal humans but, Steve thinks to himself, what does he really have left to lose?

Then T'Challa touches his arm as they are filing out of the briefing, and motions him aside. “How is Bucky?” he asks, his soft brown eyes warm with concern.

Steve looks at T'Challa in confusion. “W-what do you mean, Your Majesty? Isn't he--”

T'Challa's face goes grey. “He... our scientists found a way to remove the control codes. A month ago. He left Wakanda in September--”

“Oh,” Steve says, and the loss comes crashing down on him, cold and final, like the Arctic ice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter title song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2hxU4UG3dA)  
>     
> I am so sorry this has taken so long. I was destroyed by deadlines in November and December. Probably the hardest two months of my professional life. It's mostly over now... 
> 
> Anyway, have fun with all the Marvel Universe guest stars in this chapter :D
> 
> Let me know if you want a guide to them - there are no OCs, all characters are minor Marvel comics characters (some of whom I adore)
> 
> Also, the Jean-Pierre character is aka Northstar, one of comics' first out superheroes. His original coming-out scene really WAS in the middle of a supermarket frozen food section while battling a dude called Captain Canuck. Feast your eyes on the trainwreck in Aisle 12, and remember that there's a two for one special on Tater Tots rn:


	4. The Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy Nelson: Agony Aunt, to the rescue

Steve was already hip-deep in depression but he hits the denial stage as he strides across Fifth Avenue, heading west after the briefing he'd walked out of. It couldn't be Bucky... could it? The man Steve had known his whole life, managing to hide his identity during the most intimate act in existence? Why would Bucky do such a thing? And _how?_

But too many things added up. The super-strength. The possessiveness. The almost casual disdain for the Tower's sophisticated security. The reason he feels like _home_ , even though he was someone Steve thought was a complete stranger.

Bargaining and guilt comes between 7th and 8th avenues, as the pavement clutters with tourists ambling confused and wide-eyed towards Times Square. How could he have known it was Bucky? Bucky had an entire life without him... and it's not as if Steve even saw or understood Bucky's new, huge body, other than as a weapon sheathed in black leather or hidden under layers of civilian disguise. Hell, he'd been so stressed and off-balance after Zemo's arrest that he hadn't even hugged Bucky before he went into cryo. Maybe it was his fault. If he'd been a better friend, he would have known Bucky's new shape. He would have _realised_.

And _God_ , that shape. Steve had to stop for a moment and lean against the side of a building, his breath suddenly ragged at the memory of those thick, rippling muscles under his hands, at a hot body which smelled of juniper and smoke and whisky and a faint tang of something metallic. At how he'd finally gotten everything he wanted with Bucky, and it had been better than even his wildest, teenage-hormone-fuelled fantasies.

And.

Then.

Bucky.

Left.

_**Again.** _

 

(Had it been a test? Had Steve _failed?_ )

Steve shoves away from the fake-marble façade of the office building he'd slumped against, jams his hands in his pocket, and stalks across Times Square, head down, shoulders up. _What the hell, Buck,_ he thinks. That's when it finally settles on him that he no longer knows Bucky at all. That it isn't a case of undoing programming and getting his old Bucky back, older and quieter, but still his friend. The memories may be there now, but that friend... that _person_ is a stranger now. And Steve doesn't have the faintest idea what is in his head.

It is as if one of the last, tenuous roots that links Steve to his youth, to his past, invisible to all but the most probing fingers, finally rips free. One sharp pain, the hollow and sickening pop of a torn tendon or a dislocated shoulder, and the island of _SteveandBucky_ breaks off from the mainland and disappears into the fog. The Winter Soldier had been terrifying, but Steve had known in his heart the blankness behind his eyes would be replaced eventually. Now, there were no more curtains to be drawn aside. No more veils to drop. Just a pale-eyed stranger with a metal arm.

(Should he have tried harder?)

Anger takes over at 9th Avenue, as a handsome, smiling male couple steps off the sidewalk to avoid him. Is it all some sort of joke to Bucky? An odd sort of revenge for letting him fall; for not being there to save him after the helicarriers; after Berlin? After all, he'd chosen _cryo_ over Steve. And then, when well again, didn't even _call_. Even worse, he must have asked T'Challa not to inform the Avengers. Did he seduce Steve to mock him? Were he and Foggy and Murdock sitting around laughing at what a pathetic loser Steve Rogers is?

And what the hell did he mean by, _Forget me, I don't exist_.

Steve slams the door open and strides into the law offices of Nelson & Murdock off 10th Avenue in such a state of righteous fury the pretty cornsilk-blonde receptionist gasps and fumbles the pot of yoghurt she's holding, sending it all over the files on her desk. “Where is he?” Steve roars, so hot with anger it feels like the tips of his ears will catch fire.

Foggy Nelson stumbles out of his office, flapping his hand at an older black lady sitting across from his desk, imploring her not to get up. He shuts the door and tries to tuck in an errant shirttail before facing Steve. “Uh... who?” Foggy squeaks.

“Bucky,” Steve snarls.

And if Steve had the slightest doubt about Bucky and his lover being the same person, it is squashed by the beet-red blush that canters over Foggy's cheeks.

Foggy realises he's blown it at the same time that Steve fists his hands at his sides so as not to pick the chubby young lawyer off the ground and _shake_ him. “Shit,” Foggy curses quietly as he all but collapses against a nearby bookcase, sending a well-thumbed 2010 copy of the New York Graybook crashing to the floor.

“Foggy, you have two seconds to tell me where he is,” Steve grits out, well aware how fast and how completely Bucky can disappear if he gets any warning. He looms nearly a foot over the bumbling, long-haired lawyer.

Then Foggy Nelson pushes himself to standing, takes a deep breath, and folds his arms.

 

“No,” he says.

 

“What?” Steve asks, his voice almost cracking in surprise.

“I'm not ratting out my friend,” Foggy says, raising his chin. “You want to see him? You can text him like a grown-up. Also, as your lawyer, I would strongly advise against having conversations about your relationship while you are in this... _confrontational_ a state of mind.”

“Foggy,” Steve all but shouts, “You are _not_ my lawyer.” He punts the Graybook across the room. “And we don't _have_ a relationship.”

Foggy gives him the most baleful glare he's ever received outside of Wanda, or Bucky's Ma. He holds up his index finger. “One. I _should_ be,” he hisses. “Two, seriously? _SERIOUSLY?!_ ” The final word climbs to a pitch meant more for dogs than portly Irish-American lawyers.

Steve is so shocked that he momentarily forgets that he's supposed to be threatening Foggy.

“God, you're worse than Matty,” Foggy whispers to himself. Then he snaps his fingers at Steve and waves him to one of the old leather armchairs in the waiting room. “Sit,” Foggy commands. “You will have a cup of coffee, and then you will text.”

Steve sits.

Then Foggy points at the blonde receptionist. “Karen! Coffee times two, and if a big glug of Jameson's happens to trip and fall into it then oh, _tragedy_.” He steps towards his office door and gestures expansively, taking in not just the people in the room, but seemingly the entire West Side. “Now if everyone in New York can behave for _five fucking minutes_ , I'm just going to go help Mrs Washington, who has an _actual real fucking problem_ , that needs to be solved by being an adult and suing the ever-loving shit out of her dirtbag landlord, and no, before you ask, punching _will not help_.” He flings the door of his office open, stomps inside, and slams it shut.

And Steve understands at last why Matt Murdock has such faith in Foggy Nelson.

Meanwhile, Karen trots out and returns with a large mug of surprisingly good coffee strongly tempered with whisky. Of course, the whisky doesn't do anything for him, but it still burns enough going down to cut through the thickness in his throat and maybe even a little of the self-pity.

He stares at his phone as he sips the coffee.

As the last, bitter-sweet mix of grounds and booze washes down his throat, he pecks out a greeting. But where to from there? _We need to talk?_ No, sounds too... off putting. _I'd like to see you._ Too needy. He groans and runs a hand through his hair.

Karen walks over and places the second coffee on the table next to him, collecting his empty mug. Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, they're both for you,” she smiles. “The boys never drink on the job.”

Steve groans, throws back another mouthful of coffee, and decides that he'll send what he's got so far, which is simply _Hey Bucky_.

The phone makes the cheerful _whooshing_ sound of a text message departing into the aether, and Steve's heart twangs slightly at the noise.

It's a long five minutes – half the cup of coffee- before a message comes back.

 

_Hey, Steve._

 

Well, whoever Bucky is now, Steve thinks, that person is also a total shit.

Luckily, two can play at that game.

 

 _What are you doing right now?_ Steve sends. Whoosh.

 

 _Nothin' much_ , comes the reply.

 

 _Wanna go out for a drink?_ Whoosh.

 

He glances up at Karen. “Karen, where around here is good for a drink?”

“Hm.” Karen taps her chin with the pencil in her fingers, leaving a little graphite smudge. “The boys always go to Flanagans, but it's not...” she wrinkles her nose in disgust. She drops her voice to a whisper. “Valhalla's a lot nicer, and you're much less likely to end up with Wade Wilson trying to give you a lapdance. Alfie's is okay, too, and less crowded.”

Steve looks up the bar in question and memorises the address, when Bucky texts back.

 

_Sorry. I have plans tonight._

 

Steve's brain tries to go in about four directions at once (one of them being straight through Foggy's office door again, where he can see him wrapping up his meeting with his client). He – and most probably Foggy's door – are saved by a second text from Bucky.

 

_But I'm at Matt's practice space right now if you want to come by. You know where it is._

 

Okay. So they were really going to do this.

Steve hustles out, to avoid Foggy's judgmental gaze, and any potential awkwardness around his client coming out to find Captain America in the waiting room. He's back out on the street and heading south in a matter of moments. It's about eight blocks to the warehouse where he'd met Bucky the second time they'd... done whatever it was they did. (Steve's cock twitches at the memory, and Steve thinks, _not a good time, body, thanks for nothing._ )

The top-floor space is unlocked when Steve gets there, a brick propped in the door to keep the heavy metal from closing. It's almost unrecogniseable in the light of day, no longer a strange, liminal nest of flickering candlelight and mindblowing sex. Now it's just... a warehouse space. Motes of dust glint in the diffuse sunbeams filtering in through grimy windows. The bed is tipped up against the wall and scuffed, padded black practice mats are laid across the cement floor. There are rolls of tape on the windowsills, and a collection of wooden bo staffs leaning haphazardly in a corner.

Steve is just about to call Bucky's name when, about ten feet away, Bucky drops down silently onto the floor from one of the rafters. He's barefoot. In plain, navy sweatpants and that's all. He stands there, waiting for Steve to make the first move.

Steve's eyes rake up his body. Bucky's left arm – and he _has_ a left arm, which must be T'Challa's doing – is covered in some sort of realistic-looking fake skin; Steve can just see the join where it fades over the scarring around his shoulder. There's a light sheen of sweat on him and it only serves to emphasise the hard lines of his huge muscles. Bucky had always had broad shoulders but the rest of him had been dancer-lithe, slim-hipped and wiry. The body of an artful dodger, stolen apple slipping into his pocket, disappearing into a crowd. But Hydra had changed him into something _else_. There was still that speed, that lightness, but now it was cloaked in this immense power, like someone had thought it was a good idea to turbocharge a tank.

“Um, you look good,” Steve manages. And Bucky does. Better – _bulkier_ – than in Romania. Even better than in Wakanda. Steve has always loved Bucky, whatever shape he was in: gawky teenager; lean, wary soldier; wasp-waisted assassin in black leather. But this... this is just _unfair_. He tries to calm the flipping feeling in his stomach. “Been working out?”

Bucky nods, his nearly-shaved head making his grey eyes look impossibly huge. “Yeah. Matty's a good sparring partner.” Then there's the tiniest quirk of the side of his mouth, the barest beginnings of a smile. “Gettin' my ass kicked by a blind guy.”

The space between them feels like an ocean, uncrossable. Steve doesn't know what to do; where to begin. He stares down at the floor between them, trying to dredge back all the things he had planned to say during his furious march cross-town half an hour ago. But suddenly all those words feel too angry, and too inadequate.

Neither of them say anything for what feels like forever, then Bucky whispers, “So.”

Steve looks up and Bucky deliberately _shifts_ , from the feral, guarded pose that Steve is gradually realising is his natural state now, to the confident, almost predatory stance Steve recognised as his “lover”. He even seems to re-arrange his face for a moment, narrowing his eyes and pouting out his lips. It's eerie, Steve thinks, how complete a transformation he achieves just by holding himself differently. Then Bucky snorts and it all falls away, back to the wary wolf's stance. He lifts his right hand to his shoulder, digging into the fake flesh there.

Steve winces as the skin seems to bunch up under Bucky's fingers, tearing free. With one long pull, Bucky rips strips of not-skin off his left arm, revealing interlocking plates of dull, brushed vibranium. His eyes, pale and wild, never leave Steve's.

Steve's body betrays him again, reacting in horribly inappropriate ways, heat pooling in his gut and his cock thickening against his leg. Apparently now that his dick knows what it's like to have Bucky on top of him, _in_ him, any sight of Bucky means his dick just goes _yes yes more of that right now, please_.

Steve digs his nails into his palms and tries to regulate his breathing. “Why,” he hisses out at last. “ _Why_.” It comes out harder and more accusatory than he intends it to, and Bucky flinches.

Bucky steps backwards and towards the window, putting more space between them, maneouvering so the light is more in Steve's eyes. Steve wonders if it's even a conscious thing any more, Bucky moving himself into the place of best tactical advantage.

“I was goin' to surprise you at the party,” Bucky says. His voice, his _real_ voice, is rusty and hesitant, so different from the smooth, assured intonation he'd used as The Lover. “A-and then you didn't recognise me.”

“I wasn't expecting to see you, Buck. I thought you were still in _cryo_ \--”

Bucky looks down at his left hand, pulling the last bits of not-skin out of his fingers. “It was probably my fault,” he mumbles, looking down and away like a scolded child. “I might have mixed up the protocols for _costume party_ and _covert op._ ” He taps his head with a metal finger. “I get, I get confused sometimes.”

Then he looks at Steve and smiles, this weak, watery smile that holds so much heartbreak and pain that Steve can barely stand to look at it. “But then I thought... what if we _weren't_ Steve and Bucky? What if there wasn't all that history to get over? If we were just two strangers? What would happen then?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows and looks away, moving to lean on the windowsill and stare out towards the sliver of the Hudson visible past the piers. “Apparently what happens is a lot of mindblowing sex. And falling in love with you all over again. Apparently _any_ variation of us involves me falling in love with you. Even when I barely know my own fucking name.”

Bucky sighs. “And then you walk away like I don't mean a damn thing, and go make time with a girl.”

“What?” Steve says, utterly confused.

“The club,” Bucky replies, and Steve feels his stomach plummet. “That blonde you were dancing with. I saw you two on my way out. The other blonde before that, in Germany.” Bucky leans against the wall and closes his eyes. “Peggy,” he breathes.

The tide of fury hits Steve like a burning wave. Bucky is so goddamn _wrong_ \--

Bucky's continuing, but Steve is barely listening as Bucky says, “Hell, you even cheated on me _with_ me, which is kind of special in its own way.” Then Bucky shakes his head, like he's accustomed to hair falling over his face, but that hair isn't there any more. There's no place left to hide. “Not that-- not that we ever had anything. I _know_ that. I may be a fucking disaster,” he laughs, hollowly, “but I know that!” The laughter dies, swallowed down to a hoarse whisper. “I just... hope too much. You do things that make me think you love me too, but...” he shrugs, tired. “I think we just have different definitions of that word.”

Bucky spreads his arms and relaxes his posture. “So I surrender. I give up. I, James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier--”

“--not any more--” Steve cuts him off.

“-- _Still_ ,” Bucky says, steel creeping back into his tone. “Still. I, who will always be in large part the Winter Soldier, I can't fight this fight any more. The thing I'm going to, tonight, is a leaving 'do the boys are throwing for me. I want you to know, Steve, that I'm mostly okay and I can take care of myself, that the trigger words are gone and my mind, such as it is, is my own. And that tomorrow I'll be gone.”

Steve crosses the space between them in four strides and grabs Bucky's right arm. “Bucky, goddamnit, no!” He pulls Bucky into him, wrapping his arms around the body that has filled his dreams and fantasies since the masquerade party. Around the _person_ he's loved his whole damn life.

Bucky is tense, not responding to the embrace at all. The faraway look in his eyes makes Steve a little sick, but he presses on regardless. He won't let Bucky leave again, not with so much unsaid. “You're not the only one that's confused. I've _always_ wanted you, Buck. I admit I've fucked it up, I've chickened out so many times, but the past couple weeks I've been so happy, Buck...”

Steve sighs, and runs his fingers down Bucky's back, hoping Bucky will relax sooner or later. “...Don't make me go back to a world where you don't touch me any more.”

“That person wasn't me!” Bucky shouts, wrenching himself out of Steve's grip and backing across the room. “He wasn't _real_ , Steve! It was a _cover_.”

“It was you,” Steve growls, pointing at Bucky. “The best parts of it were you. I _know_ you.”

Bucky laughs, hollow and despairing. “No you don't.” He slumps against the wall. “You really fucking don't.”

Steve's voice falters. “I want to, Buck. Let me try?”

Bucky doesn't move, hunched against the wall with his eyes shut.

Steve has no idea what to do. He _wants_ to grab Bucky and kiss him until he's dizzy, but he has the feeling if he lays a hand on the other man right now, Bucky will throw him through a wall. So he decides to play dirty.

“You didn't enjoy what I and you-- _your cover identity_ – got up to?”

Bucky's suddenly in his space, backing him up until his back is to the wall, caging him between his arms. The cold of the brick wall on his back contrasts with the hard heat of Bucky's body, inches from his. The look on Bucky's face is unreadable, terrifyingly so, and Steve isn't sure whether they're about to fuck or fight.

He risks a glance down at the front of Bucky's sweatpants.

He risks moving a hand, slowly, to palm the bulge there.

Bucky's eyes blow dark and he presses into Steve's touch. His metal hand slips off the wall, gripping the back of Steve's neck, and Steve goes boneless at the touch. Bucky possessing him; it's all he's ever wanted. His eyes flutter shut and he moans at the heat that's coursing through his body, down his spine, radiating out from those metal fingers.

Bucky presses into him, scraping his cheek with the sharp line of his stubbled jaw, and whispers into his ear: “if you had fucked that blonde in the bathroom, I would have killed her. Snapped her neck in the alley behind the club.”

His hand drops away from Steve's neck, which is just as well, as all Steve's blood feels like it's turned to ice. Bucky leans his forehead against Steve, the passion between them extinguished as fast as it had flared up. His voice is halting. “I can't share you. This is what I mean when I say we have different definitions of love. It's not some namby-pamby bullshit, Steve. I _focus_ on things. To... to, uh,” Bucky sighs and pushes himself away from the wall, away from Steve. He wipes his flesh hand down his face. Then he laughs, hollow and broken, throwing his arms out to the side in a gesture of helplessness. “Foggy's expression was _to an extremely unhealthy extent_ but 70 years of mission focus kept me alive, so hey. Old habits.”

He turns back to Steve with that old Brooklyn smirk on his face, and seeing it just about cuts Steve off at the knees. “You can't be my mission, Steve.”

“I can survive anything you throw at me, Buck,” Steve growls.

“Not you I'm worried about,” Bucky says.

“So you got all the answers, then,” Steve sighs, his annoyance building.

It sharpens further when Bucky barks a laugh at him. “Buddy, you seriously asking the guy with brain damage if he has all the answers? Jesus fucking Christ, I can't even remember the questions.” Bucky jumps up, all fluid grace, and grabs one of the rafter beams, swinging up on top of it. “I'm just trying not to hurt people any more. Been doing okay, too. If there was such a thing as Murderers Anonymous, I'd have my one-month chip by now.”

Steve does some fast mental arithmetic and as he opens his mouth to ask, Bucky says, “Yakuza.”

“Asking for it?”

“They were gonna shoot Foggy.”

“Could you have brought 'em down without killing 'em?”

“In theory, yeah, but this is what I'm driving at, Steve. I'm always half a breath away from my instincts taking over, and my instincts think the solution to every problem is murder.”

Steve can't help the grin that spreads across his face, and he starts chuckling, shaking his head.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Dunno, Buck, your instincts were pretty good when we--”

“Aw, fuck you, Rogers,” Bucky groans, and for a moment it's so much their old banter, it's like there are fireworks going off in Steve's soul.

“Yeah, see? Not just murder.”

Bucky lies down on his back along the rafter and extends a metal middle finger in Steve's direction.

Steve watches as the arm's plates recalibrate, far more quietly than his old Hydra arm. “If it's any consolation, Steve, it's taking me some pretty extreme levels of dissociation right now to not come down there and rip all your clothes off. But,” he says, sitting up again and gazing down at Steve through his long, dark lashes, “I gotta learn to have... things. Not to over-react when I see other people looking at you the way I look at you. Because a lot of people do.” He smiles. “Don't think New York's the place to learn that. Too much potential collateral damage.” His face brightens. “Though I _could_ fuck up the FDR, and then maybe we could hit the 405 and go for a freeway trifecta. I saw this Michael Bay movie where they knocked over a truck that was carrying this huge motorboat during a car chase. The damn thing shot out across the freeway and not gonna lie, Stevie, I thought _I bet I could do better than that_.”

Steve has tears coming down his face from laughing so hard, and it shouldn't be funny, it _really_ shouldn't, but Steve can't help it. The past stops feeling like a suffocating weight, when its biggest victim is cracking jokes about it.

He wipes his cheeks on his sleeve, then strolls over to just underneath Bucky's perch. “There's only one problem with your awesome plan, Buck.”

“Beyond not getting to fuck you senseless on a regular basis?”

“Okay, two problems,” Steve says. Then he waits.

Bucky shifts around until he's lying on his belly, chin on his hands, looking down at Steve. He arches an eyebrow.

“You're not the only messed-up one, Buck.” Steve drags his hands through his hair. “This is gonna sound stupid, but I forgot how to take care of myself somewhere.”

There's a snort from above him, and a mutter that sounds suspiciously like, “As if at any point in your life you actually knew how.”

“Bucky...” Steve says, a warning in his voice. “I'm serious. Your... alias, your cover... _whatever_ it was. Somehow, even when you were pretending real hard to be somebody else, you still took care of me.” His voice cracks on the next words: “Nobody's taken care of me since 1944. They all want to look, hell, a lot of 'em want to do a lot more than look. But...” he shrugs, not able to find the words. When he continues, it's barely above a whisper. “When we were together... you were giving more than you took.” He presses his lips together, trying not to cry. “You always do. Please don't take that away from me.”

Steve sits down at the base of the pillar that supports the rafter, and hangs his head between his knees. Silence stretches across the open space, silence and shadow as the sun makes its way down between buildings into the Hudson.

“I'm not scared of anything, but I'm scared of how I feel about you,” Steve says, soft and broken. “I've been running away from it my whole life. I could do that, when it was all--” Steve makes a weak half-circle with one hand-- “ _hypothetical_.” He shuts his eyes as his body shivers involuntarily, remembering how Bucky had touched him, how they had felt together. “I don't want anyone but you. Never have. And now that I know what it's like, I can't give it up. I _can't_. It'll destroy me, losing you again.”

Steve wipes his eyes on his sleeve and listens to the quiet sounds of Bucky changing his position on the rafters; the distant echo of sirens somewhere towards midtown. Hopefully it wasn't anything they'd need to call the Avengers for.

“What are we gonna do, Steve?” Bucky eventually whispers.

“What we always do. Get by,” Steve whispers back. “I'll keep you from killing other people, and you keep me from killing myself. Deal?”

The lights change three times on 10th Avenue before Bucky whispers back, in a quiet, scared voice, “Deal.”

 

* * *

 

The back room of Flanagans is packed, which is to say it has about a dozen noisy partyers in it plus another few folk slumped at the bar trying to ignore them. The front room of Flanagan's is packed too, with the 9th Avene after-work crowd, all ignorant that a fair portion of Manhattan's freaks, vigilantes, and mutants (as well as an out of town villain or two) are hoisting their own pints less than 20 feet away.

Frank Castle slips in through the side entrance, snags a pint on his way past the bar and claps Matt Murdock on the shoulder. “So where's the guest of honour?” he says. “Don't tell me he's missing his own leaving 'do.”

“Fashionably late!” Foggy giggles, already three sheets to wind. “Or possibly conquering a third-world nation singlehandedly. You never know with Barnes.”

Frank snorts into his beer. “Too much to hope he's in Washington, scaring the toupee off our new president?”

“Alas,” says Matt Murdock. “But very tempting.”

Foggy thumps Matt on the bicep. “None'a that. We're supposed to help him rebabili-, uh, rehubulla-, uh, not murder people, Matt. Murder BAD.”

“I wasn't suggesting _murder_ , Foggy, God,” Matt hums. “Just a little light treason among friends...”

Foggy shakes his head. “Who let you and Castle and Barnes become friends? You all just enable each other.”

“Technically, you introduced us, Foggy.”

“And technically, you didn't kill all those people, Matt, gravity did.”

“The successful practice of law is built on a fine grasp of technicalities, Foggy.”

Castle nudges Foggy with his elbow as Flanagan unlocks the back door and Barnes walks in, plainly dressed in a black leather jacket, white tee, and black skinny jeans tucked into combat boots.

“Sorry I'm late,” Bucky calls out in his rusty voice, waving a metal hand in acknowledgement at the shouted insults of his friends.

Shouts that all die down when Steve steps through the door behind him.

Flanagan gives Steve his usual glare and lifts his shillelagh, before Bucky nods at the old barkeep and says, “he's with me.”

The insults turn into catcalls and exaggerated smooching noises, and the bar is treated to the sight of the Winter Soldier blushing and kicking the toes of his boots into the sawdust littering the floor.

“Okay. I got two things to say. One, I hate you all,” he rumbles. “Two, ah, certain things have come up that mean I won't actually be leaving. But I still want to party with you idiots so apparently, yes, I am brain-damaged.”

“This'll help with that,” says old man Flanagan, pushing over a bottle of clear spirit. “It's my ma's _poitín_.”

“Help fix the brain damage?” Bucky grins.

“Hell no, son. Cause more of it.”

“ _Slainté_ ,” Bucky says, uncorking the bottle and taking a long pull.

“I know Foggy and Matt, but who else--” Steve starts, before finding himself face to disgustingly ugly, sore-covered face with a tall, wiry man wearing the worst sweater he's ever seen.

“So, inquiring minds want to know, what exactly _came up_ to keep Barnes here,” the man says, before yanking at the waistband of Steve's trousers and looking inside. “ _Whoa!_ God bless America--”

That's all the man gets out before finding himself several feet off the ground with the Winter Soldier's metal hand around his throat.

“Wade,” Bucky growls. “If you touch him again, I _will_ kill you. This is your _only_ warning.”

“No-- chance-- of being the baloney in a Soviet-American sandwich?” Wade Wilson asks in and around choking for breath.

“Flanagan, door,” Bucky hisses.

The old barkeep pushes the alley door open with his shillelagh and steps away. A second later, Wade goes flying out the door and crashes into the dumpster across the alley. “Ow, Barnes. That hurt, Barnes. You owe me a drink, Barnes, or make my life complete and sit on my face, Barnes--”

The door is slammed shut.

Bucky passes Steve the bottle of spirit. “Wade Wilson. Deadpool. Alright kinda guy, actually, if a little like one of those yappy terriers who's always humping your leg.”

“See,” Steve says, bumping Bucky's shoulder affectionately as he leans back against the bar. “You didn't kill him.”

“He's actually quite hard to kill,” Bucky mutters. “Kinda blanked when I had him by the throat. But it's okay, I've thought of about five ways to do him in since then.”

“Murder BAD,” says Foggy, pointing at Bucky as he sidles up to the bar. He makes grabby hands for the _poitín_ which Steve, sensibly, lifts out of his reach. “No, seriously, Steve, give me some of that,” Foggy grumps. “I deserve it for being agony aunt to you two assholes.”

Steve almost relents but Bucky grabs the bottle from him and downs the rest of it.

“...you're gonna _die_ ,” Foggy says, in awestruck wonder. Foggy turns to Steve. “Ma Flanagan is 97 years old and can't see very well. Last batch of _poitín_ she made was like potato-flavoured rubbing alcohol with some dog hair sprinkled in for extra protein.”

“Accurate,” Bucky says, coughing slightly.

Steve smiles at him and Bucky grins back, wild and carefree, cheeks a little reddened from booze, and Steve is so happy in that moment it feels like his heart is a giant thing in his chest, swelling and pulling in all the joy he missed out on for all his frozen years and compressing it into one glowing ball. “God, I love you,” he breathes out, and it's the easiest thing he's ever said.

Bucky doesn't answer, not in words. Not at first. He just turns and presses himself up against Steve, from knee to chest, shoving Steve against the bar. He stops when his lips are millimeters away from Steve's. “I love everybody in this bar,” he breathes.

Steve snorts inelegantly and drags Bucky into a kiss. Their first kiss, and yet not. He thinks he could kiss Bucky forever, and distantly someone is shouting “my eyes!” and it sounds like Foggy, and someone else calls out “hands where we can see them, Barnes” and Steve half-opens an eye and it's the dark-haired vet with the broken nose and the skull t-shirt. And he snorts again when Bucky holds up his hands and there's a pistol in one and a knife in the other, and the middle fingers of both hands are raised.

Bucky breaks their kiss, and smiles into his lips. “I love you most of all, though.”

“Good,” Steve says. “Want to get out of here?”

“Yeah,” Bucky purrs, sliding his leg in between Steve's. “Back to your place at the Tower?”

Steve grins. “Can't. We broke everything. Remember?”

“Mm,” Bucky frowns, before biting kisses down Steve's neck. “My place?”

“NOPE!” Foggy yells. “No. NO. Uh-uh. Paper-thin walls, Barnes.”

Bucky sighs. “He has a point. Also, he lives next door.”

“Okay, then. My apartment in Brooklyn--” Steve begins.

Matt joins them at the bar. “Have you ever considered the Lincoln Bedroom?” he asks.

Bucky and Steve blink at him, until comprehension dawns and Bucky collapses against Steve, giggling like a schoolboy.

“Uh, I'm not sure that's--” Steve begins. Then he starts smiling too. “It would be quite funny.”

“You know I've broken in there before, right?” Bucky snorts.

Matt and Steve both turn to him, surprise on their faces.

Bucky's expression falters slightly; a furrow appearing in his brow. “Uh. I can't remember why. Or when. There were cellphones, one time. I remember a guard dropping an iPhone. So it must have been pretty recently.”

Foggy groans and waves his empty whisky glass at Flanagan. “Treason BAD, everyone.”

“The right to nonviolent protest is the cornerstone of a free democracy,” Matt replies.

Bucky snorts with laughter and then cuts his eyes at Steve, his gaze heated and full of promise.

Steve looks down at his shoes, blushing. “See, uh, here's the thing...” he begins. His blush deepens, as he makes a helpless little gesture with his hands.

“You know the other day when Wade got in the bar fight with that Sabretooth fella and I had to knock 'em both out? Remember what Flanagan's looked like afterwards?” Bucky says. “Like that, but with sex.”

Matt's smile broadens.

“No,” says Foggy, pointing at Matt, then at each of them in turn. “No, no, and TMI, both of you.”

“Don't worry, Foggy,” Bucky rumbles. “D.C.'s much too far away. At this point, Brooklyn might be too far away.” He grins at Steve and begins scraping his stubble lightly along Steve's jawline as his fingers, flesh and metal, hook into the waistband of Steve's trousers. “Wanna eat you out until you beg for mercy,” he whispers in Steve's ear.

Matt snorts his drink out his nose.

“We need to leave _right now_ ,” Steve says, and it comes out as half-moan, half-whimper.

Bucky is more than happy to comply.

They make it to Brooklyn, barely.

They don't even destroy anything on the way, other than Steve's Uber rating.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter title song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eWJmN8D820)
> 
> This chapter was so far 9000 words and I'm still not done writing the porn so I broke it in two. I should have part 2 (the new Chapter 5, aka Lots of Porn) posted late tomorrow. 
> 
> poitín is Irish homebrewed hooch. If you've never been in an irish pub after closing time when the owner's locked the door and brought out his family's poitín, well, you probably still have a working liver. 
> 
> Also, who the hell showed Bucky BAD BOYS 2? I blame the hospital in Wakanda. Or he torrented that shit in Romania. Oh god, a cam of BAD BOYS 2 with dodgy Romanian dubbing. BUCKY BARNES, THIS IS YOUR LIFE. 
> 
> (Bad Boys 2 is really entertaining and you should see it.)


	5. Crash Into Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rollin' and tumblin'.

Steve steers Bucky through the apartment into the largest, end bedroom. “My studio,” he breathes, between trying to kiss Bucky senseless and take his own clothes off at the same time. “Less to break there.”

Bucky makes a small whimper as Steve turns on the light. The room is beautiful, with high windows to catch all the light the city can spare... but the art supplies are still in boxes; the easel wrapped in plastic.

Steve's face falls, but as he begins to formulate his apology, Bucky surges forwards, shoving him into a wall and kissing it away. “I don't care,” he says, his lips ghosting over Steve's. “It's still more than I've managed.”

Steve smiles into the next kiss and eases Bucky back onto a small but sturdy chaise longue, that in some other life he'd bought with the idea of having models on it to sketch. Now he has his most favourite model of all, lying there in a navy v-neck long-sleeve t-shirt that bunched over his biceps, and jeans that hugged his hips and thighs in a way that was positively indecent.

Bucky runs his metal hand over the carved walnut of the backrest, and lifts an eyebrow at Steve. His expression shows his dubiousness that the chaise longue will survive what they're likely to do to each other.

“I know,” Steve says, resting a hand on Bucky's chest to keep him there. “I just...” And then Steve loses his train of thought for a moment, because Bucky's chest is broad and solid and so warm, and he's forced to run his hand down it, trailing a thumb over one of Bucky's nipples. Bucky arches into the touch, hissing, and Steve lifts his other hand to wrap around the hard planes of Bucky's waist. “I want to touch you. Look at you. Didn't get to do that when you were playing your game.”

Bucky's mouth twitches apologetically. “The arm wouldn't have stood up to much scrutiny. I couldn't--”

Steve cuts him off with a growl as he grabs the neck of Bucky's shirt with his hands and rips it open. Then he's on Bucky, kissing, exploring, mapping that beautiful, sculpted torso with his tongue and fingers. Bucky is hard in his jeans, Steve can feel it against his chest as he sucks hickeys up his lover's abs – Bucky is _his lover_ and the future is a marvellous place – and the thought of that is enough to make his own hips jerk against the edge of the chaise longue, rubbing himself into the pale green velvet of its upholstery.

Bucky's flesh hand eases down between them and undoes the button fly of his jeans, and his hips roll as the jeans are pushed down his legs. Then Steve can feel Bucky's cock hard and fiery-hot against his skin. He rubs his lips up Bucky's body one more time, at the same time as he strokes up both arms with his nails (and Bucky is biting his lower lip and arching his neck and it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen), until he is face to face with his lover, those angular cheekbones framed in his hands. “What do you want?” Steve asks. Because he'll give this man anything; everything. He could ask for the moon, and Steve would steal a rocket ship.

Bucky looks at him, his eyes black with lust, his chest rising and falling as he breathes like he's just run a marathon. Their cocks rest against each other and it's taking all Steve's self-control not to rub himself up against Bucky, to come fast and messy all over him, mark that perfect chest of his with his come.

“I want a lot of things,” Bucky murmurs.

“Well, neither of us are getting any older,” Steve whispers back. “We have time to do everything.”

Bucky bites his lip again, suddenly bashful, and it brings home to Steve how much he'd transformed himself, his reactions, when he went undercover.

“What?” Steve asks, softly, ghosting a kiss over the stubble lining Bucky's jaw.

“Will you suck my dick again?” Bucky asks, hesitantly, like Steve might say no.

Steve slides down between Bucky's legs, pulling Bucky's jeans off as he goes. They get tossed in the general direction of the painting supplies, and end up hanging off the easel. He gets comfortable, shouldering a knee aside to spread his legs wider. He grins up at Bucky, and realises he's in the perfect position to watch Bucky completely come apart under his mouth.

He wraps his lips over the head of Bucky's cock, already wet with precome, and keeps his eyes on his lover as he slowly teases him, moving down his dick ever so slowly on each bob of his head.

Bucky stares back at him, his face radiant, his expression one of someone who never expected to get this. Every muscle in his amazing body is tense, as if he's afraid Steve might vanish if he lets go.

Steve slides off his dick and moves down to lick at his balls, taking them in his mouth and rolling them on his tongue. Then he licks back up Bucky's cock and places a kiss at the top. “What are you so tense for?” Steve says.

Bucky runs a metal hand down Steve's cheekbone, along his jaw, and Steve moans involuntarily. Being touched so delicately, with such reverence, by something so murderously strong, something that should be terrifying and inhuman but that Bucky treated like a natural part of himself... it did things to him. Steve slid his lips over Bucky's metal thumb, swirling his tongue over it and then scraping his teeth gently over the pad.

Bucky shivers and giggles a little under him, his shoulders lifting up.

“How much can you feel?” Steve asks.

“New sensors,” Bucky says, still quivering like he used to when they were in the middle of a tickle-fight. “They, uh, they don't know what to do right now. So yeah, I can feel it, but the interface is still playing mix and match with what it's supposed to feel like.” Then he grows serious, and those metal fingers wrap around the back of Steve's neck in the gesture that never fails to leave him boneless with lust, and Bucky drags Steve in for a kiss. “I love you so much,” Bucky says, as their lips part. “I almost broke cover, blurted it out one time. You fuck up my programming so bad--”

Steve surges forwards and kisses Bucky with all 70 years of frustrated passion, raking his hands through the short bristles of his lover's hair. Their bodies just fit together somehow, perfectly, and they're rutting against each other, breathless as they both hurtle towards the edge, and then Bucky's hands are on his ass, gripping him so hard there will be bruises, and Bucky grinds into him hard and then his whole body is shaking, shivering, arcing under Steve and Steve can feel Bucky's come pulsing hot between them. Steve shoves a hand down around both of their cocks and strokes Bucky through his orgasm, and when Bucky bites down on his neck growling and whining his passion, the sharp pain sends Steve over the edge too, and they're shaking against each other and their lips find each other again and they're not kissing so much as connecting, just breathing and sharing everything of themselves that they have.

After a few minutes, Bucky starts nuzzling his neck, kissing him, and Steve writhes, because Bucky's stubble makes him ticklish. He starts to pull away, snorting out, “Bucky, stop it.”

Then there's two hundred and fifty-odd pounds of amorous cyborg assassin flowing off the chaise longue with deadly grace, tackling Steve to the floor. Steve laughs and rolls with Bucky. “I keep wondering how we manage to break so much stuff, and then I remember,” he says.

“Like this,” Bucky grins, wrapping his arms around Steve's waist and twisting, to throw Steve over him and then manhandle him onto his hands and knees. “S nice though, being able to shove you around and not worry about breaking you.”

Old anger flares in Steve. “I was never _that_ breakable, you oaf.”

“Sssh,” Bucky says, running his flesh hand up and down Steve's spine to calm him. He presses his chest down over Steve's back, placing his metal hand on the floor near Steve's face. “Everyone's breakable to me, now,” he says, his tone melancholy as the plates on his forearm recalibrate. “'Cept you.”

Steve sighs and pushes back into Bucky's body. “We didn't sign up for this.”

“No,” Bucky breathes back, kissing down Steve's vertebrae. “We really didn't.”

Then the pressure – all that warm weight – lifts off Steve, and he is about to turn and protest when he feels two hands, one hot, one cold, on his ass, spreading his cheeks. The moan that comes out of his mouth is entirely involuntary.

“I made a promise,” Bucky rumbles, and then there is the gentle, whiskery scrape of stubble in a most private area. Steve is fully hard again in a matter of moments.

Steve can feel the heat of Bucky's breath on his ass; disturbing the hairs on his perineum and balls. The anticipation is destroying him, and he shifts restlessly. He's about to growl out for Bucky to hurry the hell up, when the hot wet heat of his lover's tongue teasingly circles his hole.

Steve groans, and tries to push back onto Bucky's face. He gets a bite on his left cheek in response. “Behave, Rogers, or I'll spank you,” Bucky says in his low, rusty voice, and Steve suddenly wants not to behave at all, wants to be thrown over Bucky's knee and smacked until his ass is pink and raw.

Bucky must pick up on his excitement – not hard when his cock jerked at the very idea – and groans, running a metal hand up Steve's flank to tweak at his left nipple. “How'm I supposed to keep you in line, Rogers? Everything I suggest just turns you on.”

“Bucky--” Steve chokes out, shoving his ass back towards his lover. “-- _please_.”

Bucky chuckles, low in his chest, and there's something menacing about it. He shifts his position, turning and throwing one of his muscular legs under Steve to support him, and then before Steve can prepare, before Steve even expects it, Bucky _does_ it: slaps Steve's ass so hard with his flesh hand, Steve jerks and cries out. And he discovers another reason Bucky has positioned himself the way he has: when Steve's body moves forwards from the force of the blow, his cock, trapped between his own stomach and Bucky's thick thigh, gets so much friction the pleasure is almost overwhelming.

Bucky keeps him on that edge between the pain of the blows to his ass and the heavenly pressure on his cock, until Steve starts moaning and grinding against Bucky's leg, the orgasm unspooling in his gut hot and fast--

\--until Bucky moves his leg away and grabs the base of Steve's cock, circling it with cool metal fingers and stopping Steve from coming, millimeters from the edge. Steve cries out in protest, and then Bucky is behind him again, abandoning his cock andpositively attacking his ass with his tongue. Strong, broad hands on his hips immobilise him, ass in the air, as an insistent tongue breaches him and thrusts inside him. Steve shakes and screams, sinking down onto his elbows, no longer able to support himself on shaking hands.

“Buck, you're going to destroy me,” Steve gasps.

“Oh baby, you have _no idea_ how much,” Bucky purrs, brushing a bristly kiss to his hole before resuming his singleminded assault on Steve's channel. His tongue is soon joined by a thick finger, crooking and pushing down to find the small, swollen bundle of nerves inside Steve that will cause everything to explode into pleasure.

Steve screams when Bucky finds it, bucking like a rodeo bull. Bucky growls, the rumbling sending the most amazing feeling up Steve's spine, and stills him with a metal hand on the back of his neck. Then he continues eating Steve out. Steve's cock is so hard it hurts, hanging between his legs and dripping a steady stream of precome onto the floor. But every time Steve tries to speak, tries to beg Bucky to touch it, that hand on the back of his neck tightens in warning. Steve is left with nothing to do but fall apart, which he does, so rapidly and so completely under Bucky's hands and mouth that soon he can't form words, just shaking with pleasure, not coming but so close the whole time.

Bucky turns out to be an expert at sensing when Steve is close to orgasm and then backing off just enough to leave him teetering on the edge. Then, just when Steve thinks it can't get any better/worse, when he's shaking and crying with overstimulation, Bucky traces his fingers down Steve's perineum, around his balls, and squeezes Steve's cock, fisting around it and pumping, while thrusting with his tongue into Steve. He ruthlessly brings Steve to the peak of orgasm again, fast and hard, and then just as Steve grits his teeth and his body begins to unspool, Bucky pulls away from him, metal fingers tight around the base of his cock.

Steve wails, because he can't take much more of this, he _can't_ , and then Bucky is jerking him off again, this time with his metal hand and _holy shit_ , what's left of Steve's brain falls over a little more about how hot that is, and finally, finally Bucky lets him come, and Steve thinks that's it, _at last_ , but as the first stripe of come paints the floor he feels something against his ass and Bucky thrusts his cock into him, bottoming out in one hard thrust, unerringly dragging the entire length of his monster cock along Steve's prostate on the way in. Steve screams as his orgasm seems to find another gear entirely, doubling in intensity, and he loses all control over his body, just hanging onto the floor for dear life as Bucky turns him inside out and drowns him in pleasure.

As Steve comes and comes, his body convulsing, Bucky rolls his hips, rubbing himself over Steve's prostate and pushing Steve's already overstimulated body further into a bliss so sharp it's almost painful.

When Steve finally stops shaking, Bucky pulls him onto his side and embraces him. Steve is a mess and he knows it. He's covered in his own come, snot and tears and drool on his face, body bathed in sweat. Yet Bucky still curls around him, pulling Steve's back against his chest, like he's the most precious, beautiful thing in the world, to be worshipped and protected. The thought of it, and of Bucky still inside him, still hard somehow and filling him, stretching him over that huge dick of his, makes fresh tears flow down Steve's face.

They lie there on their sides, on the white-painted floorboards of the studio, cuddling. Bucky presses kisses into Steve's hairline, and Steve should feel warm and safe but once he comes down enough from what he's pretty sure is the most intense orgasm he'll ever have, he starts to _think_. And soon there's a question, tugging at his insides. He knows it's one of those _you may not want to pull on that thread_ questions, but he's Steve Rogers, so he's going to ask it anyway.

He leans his head back and rubs his hair against Bucky's cheek. “Buck, you're an amazing lover. I mean, not that I have a ton of experience, but you... God, what you do to me...”

Bucky mumbles happily into his neck and squeezes him closer. Then he feels Steve's hesitation, and lifts his head up. “What.”

Steve presses his lips together. “How do you know how to do all that?” he asks, in a small voice. 'D-did Hydra--”

Bucky snorts and buries his face in Steve's hair again. “No, Steve. Hydra had to muzzle me so I wouldn't bite my handlers' fingers off. And they had no idea how fast my system would burn through their drugs. I mean, they gave up on sedation within a few weeks of capturing me. So _no_ , nobody was stupid enough to try to get their dick near, or in, the Winter Soldier.”

“Oh,” Steve exhales. “Thank God.”

“Mm,” Bucky hums. “But remember what I said about focusing on things? Got my first hard-on in 70 years about two weeks after I broke my conditioning. Felt really good. Decided I wanted to learn everything I could about having orgasms, basically. So, uh, I looked at sex as another skill set to acquire, a martial art to learn, because that's how my brain works. That's also a nice way of saying I watched a shit-ton of porn in Romania.”

Steve reaches back and pats Bucky on the thigh. “Good mission; well chosen.”

“Yeah, it was. The whole idea of doing something that made me feel good and also could make other people feel good was imprtant to me. I think part of me felt it was a big fuck you to Hydra. But you were the first person I actually slept with, after... after all that.”

Bucky starts rolling his hips; Steve realises that Bucky is still hard inside him, and snuffles a startled cry as Bucky rubs against his prostate.

“Too much?” Bucky asks. “If you're still too sensitive I can--”

He never gets to finish that sentence, because Steve shoves Bucky onto his back and manages to turn, keeping Bucky inside of him, until he's on his knees, gazing down at his lover's half-lidded eyes and blissed-out expression.

“God, Steve,” Bucky moans, reaching up with his right hand to trail reverent fingers down Steve's ribs and across his abs. He folds his left arm behind his head and gazes up at Steve with such love on his face it's almost painful. Steve laces his fingers into Bucky's and leans forwards, almost letting Bucky come out of him, to kiss Bucky's scarred knuckles.

Then he sits down hard, sending Bucky's cock so far up inside himself he can almost taste it. He throws his head back and moans, and he can feel Bucky under him, how his entire body tenses and bows upwards, trying to bury himself inside his Steve even deeper still.

Steve lets his torso fall forwards until he's supporting himself with straight arms, his hands on either side of Bucky's head, a position where he can gaze into his lover's grey-blue eyes, watch him come apart, for the entire time they are fucking. And then Steve rides Bucky like a runaway stallion, thighs pistoning up and down as he pulls up and then impales himself down on Bucky's cock over and over. Bucky moans and writhes beneath him, thrusting up to meet him, hands running reverently over his thighs and hips, face radiant and chest blushed with arousal.

Neither of them last long. As Bucky's rhythm gets messy and unco-ordinated and his perfect lips open in an “O” of arousal, he grabs Steve's cock with his right hand and begins fisting over his cock furiously. Steve has just the presence of mind to swat at him and moan, “no, the other hand,” and then when Bucky circles his cock with metal fingers it's all over. Steve comes, his body clenching hard over Bucky's cock, and it's enough to send Bucky over the edge too, and he's filling Steve up, his face in orgasm the most beautiful thing Steve's ever seen, the face of an angel, young and perfect, and Steve realises that he'd happily devote the rest of his life to trying to make Bucky look like that as often as possible.

After Bucky slips out of Steve, finally soft, Steve gets shakily to his feet, feeling like a newborn calf. He tugs Bucky up too, who grumbles. “Bed, Buck. We're not falling asleep on the floor.”

“I am perfectly fine with falling asleep on the floor, Steve.”

“Yeah, well some of us weren't raised in a barn. C'mon.” Steve leads Bucky into the bedroom and gets into bed, throwing open the duvet for him to crawl under. Bucky hums happily, his eyes lidded with exhaustion, and tumbles in next to him. As Bucky snuggles into Steve's chest, curling himself up smaller than a huge cyborg death assassin should really able to, Steve has another thought. Being Steve Rogers, he of course vocalises it immediately. “Who takes care of you, Buck?”

“I can take care of myself,” comes the sleepy reply, into Steve's chest. It's followed by a little nip at Steve's pecs, then a wet kiss.

Steve strokes him, rubbing his short hair, easing the tension in his scalp the way Bucky had for him, the second time they'd made love. “You don't have to. Not any more.” He runs his other hand down Bucky's metal arm and back up, over and over, stroking it, warming the metal with his body heat.

A whole-body shiver runs through Bucky and he curls up even tighter.

Then it's like a levee breaking. At first Steve thinks Bucky is kissing him again, but then he realises the wetness he can feel against his chest is tears, and he puts his arms around his lover and holds him, just holds him, as Bucky shakes through 70 years of horror, as he finally lets go of everything he's buried in order to stay even remotely functional.

“I was so scared, Steve,” Bucky whispers, in the smallest voice he's ever heard. “They fucked me up so bad. I'm never gonna be okay. I'm so messed up--” he starts to pull away, and Steve won't let him, he just pulls Bucky back into his chest, into home, into safety.

“I love you anyway,” Steve says. “I love this you. This clever, scary survivor. You make me... you make me feel like whatever happens, I can get through it, because you've gotten through so much worse. I look at you and you give me hope.”

He gets a poke in the ribs with a metal finger, for that, and he snorts with laughter.

“Also a boner. You give me a boner pretty much 24/7 and I need not to think about you in those black suede lace-up trousers when I get bored in briefings.”

He gets another poke in the ribs and there's a happy little snort from the face pressed against his chest.

“It was nice being that fake person, though. He had his shit together,” Bucky mumbles.

“Mm, it seems nice at first,” Steve whispers. “But then it slowly suffocates you. Cuts you up bit by bit until you lose yourself, until there's nothing but an empty shell where your own self used to be.”

Bucky uncurls slightly and looks up at Steve, eyes shining with concern and protectiveness. “That's not going to happen any more. I'll burn that uniform myself, kidnap you, if I have to. Fuck them,” he snorts, settling into the crook of Steve's neck, tickling him with the stubble on his chin. “They've taken enough from us.”

 

* * *

 

They get a week before the world needs saving again. (A week that a sofa, an armchair, the coffee table, a closet door -- don't ask -- and a tiled wall in Steve's shower don't survive. The bed made it through, but the wall behind the headboard looks like the surface of the Moon.)

But they get a week, before the call goes out to Assemble. There's an AIM factory, in Florida, building dangerous androids.

Steve stumbles into the briefing at Avengers Tower 20 minutes after everyone else, earning a glare from Coulson. “Sorry, I was tied up,” he says as he sits down.

Wanda immediately smiles at him, and Steve smiles back at her. She makes an _OK_ symbol with her fingers.

Natasha Romanov doesn't miss the way Steve self-consciously tugs the cuffs of his leather jacket down to cover his wrists. She catches his eye and mouths _surprise_ , and is rewarded by a blush and a grin.

“I'm glad you think this is funny, Captain Rogers--” Coulson begins, but trails off when he realises there is someone else, leaning against the doorframe and tugging off a pair of gloves. “Winter Soldier,” Coulson says, his tone so carefully neutral it's almost an act of aggression. “What are you doing here?”

“First,” the man says, examining metal fingers, “my name is Bucky. Second, I'm coming on the op.”

“No you're not,” says Coulson. “This is an Avengers--”

Bucky smiles, feral and dangerous. “Stop me.”

“Oh hell no, not again,” Sam groans. “I'm not stopping him. Someone _else_ can stop him.”

Coulson's smart enough to backpedal as fast as he can. “You-- _hnnnh_ ,” he sighs, putting a hand on his forehead. “You are still considered a wanted terrorist and war criminal. To have you seen with the Avengers would be a gift to the people trying to re-introduce the Accords--”

“Then, simple,” Bucky says, strutting over to sprawl in the empty seat next to Steve, his eyes never leaving Coulson. “I won't be seen with the Avengers. I won't be seen at _all_. But I'm still going to be there.”

Coulson turns to Steve, his face beseeching. “Captain--”

Steve shrugs. “Bucky is _very_ good at undercover work. If he says he won't be seen, he won't be seen.”

“I'll vouch for his training,” Natasha says, “as it was mine as well.”

Bucky tilts his head and touches two fingers to his brow in salute to her.

“Honestly, Phil, I'd feel better with Bucky on overwatch,” Steve says.

Coulson points to Clint. “Captain, we have a sniper--”

“Bow's a short-range weapon,” Bucky says, at the same time as Clint says “hey, I got no objections to the second-best sniper in the world helping out.”

“Second-best?” Bucky squawks. “This is going to end badly, Barton,” he growls, but there's a teasing edge to it.

“I certainly hope so,” Clint grins. “Preferably at Flanagans, as I liberate you from decades of back pay via the ancient game of pub darts.” He folds his arms behind his head and leans back in his chair, immensely pleased with himself.

The chair promptly falls over.

“Dammit,” Clint says from the floor.

“If everyone can concentrate on the operation at hand,” Coulson sighs.

They manage to, up until the point the talk switches to getting everyone home afterwards and Sam asks if the quinjet can drop him in D.C. on their return from Florida.

Bucky nudges Steve and grins. “We could...” he whispers.

Steve's eyes widen. “Bucky, _no_ ,” he says, in his best Captain America voice.

But then Bucky bites his lip and looks up at Steve, those icy eyes through those impossibly long sable lashes, and he takes his metal hand and begins rubbing the back of Steve's neck with it.

Steve is sure his face is doing something inappropriate for an intelligence briefing because dimly in the background, he can hear Sam hoot and Coulson splutter.

“We'll be stopping in D.C. too,” Bucky says, not removing his hand from Steve's neck.

Steve feels like he should do something leader-like but at the moment all he can do is try very hard not to get an erection. He takes deep breaths and pictures the Red Skull. That does the trick. “We are _not_ going to break Abraham Lincoln's bed,” he whispers.

Bucky leans in to brush his lips across Steve's ear. “Fine,” he breathes back. “But we're gonna break everything else.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys no no it was Frank Castle who showed Bucky Bad Boys 2. They sit around and clean guns and can tell horrible stories to each other about things they've done / been through and neither bats an eyelid. And while they're doing it they watch bad 80s and 90s action films. Because nobody else in their friends group thinks it's a good idea to watch RAMBO with Frank and Bucky, but they think it's a GREAT idea.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Welcome to "I have eight hojillion deadlines but instead decided to write 5k of Stucky porn" aka "BetteNoire has terrible time management skills and makes dodgy life choices". Please comment if you like! I'm going to be a little poor about responding to comments for a few more weeks because christ the deadlines but I promise every comment is treasured like a diamond and I add it to my big hoard and sit on them like a scaly old dragon.
> 
> This was also supposed to be for Soft Stucky Week but apparently all I can do is write angst.
> 
> If you enjoy this I have [a few other Stucky works on here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/works) plus [a trashy novel you can read for free on Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/story/81593275-heartbreak-incorporated)


End file.
